To Chance This Nebulous Path
by Fluffy Cookies
Summary: Left on their own in a godless world, the survivors of the twelfth cycle must find a way back to their homeworlds. With no divine intervention to aid them and countless forces at the ready to deter them, they'll have to trust in one another for a chance to get back home. Without a clear path to follow, what choices will they have to make along the way? Canon divergent, Duodecim.
1. P: Only Enough Time to See, Not Dream

**Setting:** During Duodecim and heavily canon divergent. Certain worldbuilding elements, such as gateways, have been meta'd and greatly altered to death for the sake of plot, and some of the Dissidia lore, in general, has been changed. Certain Duodecim plot elements have also been changed.

**Cast:** It's an ensemble. A good deal of it consists of the characters that were introduced in Duodecim (Tifa, Laguna, Lightning, etc.).

**Average chapter length:** 8K to 20K words on average per chapter. The prologue is an exception to this, being shorter because it's a "take a sip and decide if it's your cup of tea before drinking more" kind of thing.

**Updates:** Since the chapters are super lengthy and require heavy proofreading, the waits in between will be quite long. Expect updates within three weeks or a month.

**Beta:** It'd be really helpful to have a constructive, educated beta look over these long chapters to check for minor and major screw-ups of all kinds. :)

**Warnings:** It's M-rated. That means mature themes galore. And lots of swearing. And some disturbing graphic elements. Also, lots of meta. Final Fantasy characters outside of the general Dissidia universe will be relevant. Spoilers run rampant here too. This story is heavy on the angst (of course with lighthearted moments to break up the depressing ones). Additionally, undisclosed pairings develop over time. When the story is complete, I will disclose them in the character tags. Besides all of this, there are other elements in this project that I've decided not to warn readers about in advance, so if you're not okay with that, this might not be for you.

**Inspiration credit:** To the author, **Poisonberries,** for being an amazing source of inspiration for this project and my other works. Without their contributions to fanfiction, I doubt I would have done all the fanfiction projects I've worked on.

**Special thanks:** To a personal friend of mine who offered to beta read this project and my other ones for me whenever she has the time to. Her technical suggestions really helped put this piece on a whole other level. :)

* * *

"But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins."

― Lauren Oliver, _Pandemonium_

* * *

_Prologue - Only Enough Time to See, Not Dream_

When Terra Branford awakens, she doesn't dare open her eyes.

_Please,_ she thinks as if in prayer, delirious, _I've already seen so much… too much… too much cruelty..._

Around her, the air is suffocatingly arid. The ground beneath her face-up, flat body, unruly and paradoxically cold in contrast. An overhead light from a source she can't make out scrapes her closed eyes.

Grit assaults eyelids that are crusted over with mucus, and despite the resulting pain of irritation there and the ever-growing pain around a shin that feels soaked in something hot, messy, and oozy, she can't bring herself to open her eyes. No. She can't bring herself see the desolate truth that is reality. Not again.

She'd killed so many manikins. _They probably had feelings of their own but couldn't express them for some reason,_ she thinks, and the thought sails the waves of her turbulent mind along with countless others. There were always so many possibilities and unknowns, so many that she could never bring herself to kill them on instinct. Yet, it somehow felt both wrong and right whenever one of her spells struck true against hard, crystalline skin. Wrong, in that she felled another life when she could have preserved it. Right, strangely, in that she felt accomplished something physical on her own will for once. And even then, that wasn't so right at all, when all she did was kill to preserve a lie she no longer believes in.

Until now, she always reminded herself that she was doing it all to protect Vaan and the others, that their lives mattered more than the things she was killing, that she couldn't afford to hesitate and be indecisive, but now it doesn't work, because now she knows that it was just some big lie she made to keep herself in action. Or it at least felt like a lie. Something to keep her doing something, because she always thinks so deeply about these things, never acting when she has to.

_They're still living things, manikins… and I know nothing about them..._

Even now, it's a maybe-lie she still wants so desperately to believe. Just like all the fairytales some dark-skinned man from a different realm, a different plane of existence, would always tell her when he would lull her to sleep.

New and old pain sears the shin she now realizes is not only broken but weighed down by something stony and heavy. An outsider would see her as a fallen angel; broken down bone by bone, senseless war after senseless war, but yet somehow still emanating with all concepts pure and morally right. The thought's funny to her, even gets her to snort a bit through dried out nostrils, even though she doesn't smile at it, because the irony of what she actually is so cruel, so true, so _right._ Like everything fairytales aren't, it's brutal and destructive, the truth of it all. But now, unlike moments before, the truth doesn't hurt to see; to believe.

She's no angel. She's a harbinger of chaos, a devil in the guise of a sheep. A weapon of war better off mindless or dead. Better off with clipped wings and no free will. And as she lies here, bruised and crippled and frail, flooded with thoughts that don't feel different from her deadly injuries, Terra Branford regrets her existence.

There was already so much death here, so much suffering, and she'd made too many depressing contributions to count in this world. Unwillingly or not, she'd always riled up the jaws of destruction in her wake.

_They'd all be better off… if I was never here..._

She opens her eyes.

Above her, ardent sunlight is hogged up by greedy, dull clouds. The tight pressure on her eyes dwindles, and cloudy, violet irises dilate in response. Between the faint ringing in her ears and the soft sound of passing gales, she thinks she hears a voice. A smooth, baritone one, swathed in all things pleasant and precious.

"_Of course not, Terra,"_ and then she remembers a man that ruffled her hair, pulling her into an embrace with strong, comforting arms. Even in remembrance, the warmth of his words and the hug is as striking as it was that day. Like sunlight, it persists all day, for all her life, no matter how much ashen clouds try to steal the golden rays from her.

His name, it's now so ready to come off the tip of her water-deprived tongue. So clear and easy to recall and speak so suddenly.

"_L-Leo,"_ she croaks through chapped lips. Her voice has the strength of a dandelion caught effortlessly in the grip of a breeze. She feels sturdy and nourished when she utters the name. Safe. Nurtured.

"_Bad things happen. Arguments, fights. Sometimes, it's all because of our involvement. That's what happens when we try to promote a cause we believe in, too. There's always gonna be opposition and conflict, Terra. Whether it's from yourself, friends, family, strangers, the living things you fight. It's just in our human DNA."_

It's all as transparent and pristine as a crystal to her when she remembers the way he would perch her on his lap and hug her closer to him, whether it was to tell her another story or to comfort her trembling self.

"_But no matter what they tell you, what you tell yourself, you have to keep trying. Keep putting yourself out there. If there's still a chance to do what you believe in, you get up and keep trying. Even if you're not sure exactly what dream or cause it is you're standing up for. Do something. Ignite change."_

Warm, wet tears, fresh and bitter, seize her unsteady eyes. Leo's voice doesn't feel nurturing or safe to hear anymore. And yet, it still sets something in her free. Something that's been bound in her wreck of a mind for so many years. Doubt constricts it, captures it as though it's a snake, wrapping tight, unforgiving coils around it.

_But reality's too much, Leo._ Tears roll over tombstone-cold cheeks. Excruciating thoughts tangle with warm memories, freezing them. _I… I can't change it… I'm just some monster. I'm not human. I'm too different. No one will understand me. I can't help anyone. I don't deserve to help anyone. Maybe I should just die, so I won't destroy any more lives and hopeful futures that way… _

She awaits a response. Something to soothe her, the way his embraces did. Something to give her more hope, the way all those nice little stories did…

But there's nothing. Because that's all she can remember. While the thought alone wracks her with immeasurable hurt, she focuses on what she did manage to recall — his beautiful, crinkled grin, his love, his words. It dulls the ache from before, reassures her that it's not the end of the world.

She shifts her tear-moistened eyesight to see what's crushing her shin, and the pain is riper now that her memories don't distract her as much as they did before. Splattered with radiant blood, a fallen pillar rests atop a mess of rotting sinew and gaping flesh that drools blood. It courses over pale skin in veiny patterns. A lone, long bone protrudes from the wreckage of human-esque biology. Waves of nausea thrash against her insides hard, and she's barely able to hold back the puke that wells up in a parched throat.

Leo's words and her thoughts are the loudest things she still hears, still stuck in her battered head, and they are like the sounds of numerous water drops that descend from gritty stalactites in a cave. Loose and disjointed, there's no rhyme or flow to them. It's all like a running faucet that's broken beyond repair, so all the water keeps flowing, spilling, drowning her. It's impossible to stop it. Along with all the physical pain that continuously blooms on her leg that keeps her on the verge of letting out a shrill scream…

_Do something. Do something. Do something._

This is the mad mantra that comes from the overflow, one that pulses with the rhythm of a marching battalion of soldiers, and she's almost shocked by what it makes her do. How it all twists and contradicts what she'd thought about herself before.

It gets her to push herself up from craggy earth, gets her to bite down on a blistered tongue as fresh pain bursts from her rank leg and chokes every tendon and nerve with an unrelenting strangle. Gets her to face the wreckage that looks painfully impossible to remove. There's a nagging voice in her head that tells her she's better off dead, that there's no more value to her struggles or her life. That she needn't burden the lives of those who weren't devils in the guise of a lost, fragile girl. And maybe in the future, it'll be proved right. Maybe.

_But,_ she thinks, bracing feeble nerves, _there's also a chance I can prove it wrong._ The thought doesn't feel as triumphant to her as it sounds. She almost feels stupid for daring to think it at all. Still, it's enough to feel true, real, and not at all a lie.

Sweat-slicked fingers push against the grooves of the inanimate pillar as she leans forward and blood spills from her split lips and withered tongue. She steels her gut, inhales dusty air. Black magic darkens blue veins to a ripe indigo. Internally, she commands the gales to rise from nothingness.

_There's a chance that I… maybe a monster like me can make things better…_

She's not sure how she's able to start casting the spell through the mental and physical pain of it all — from how the black magic drains the life from brittle bones to how it dulls vibrant veins. But strangely that thought doesn't matter anymore when she hears the spell let loose. The Aeroga is a deformed anomaly that tries to become a cyclone but contorts and twists instead. In tune with her throbbing, hurting body, it spins in alien shapes that sprout in all the wrong angles. There's no sense of control or domination to command the bellows of the spell, nothing to dull her emotions and aches, so as it all comes out, it forces out a banshee-like screech from swollen lips. Bones pop and crack, but not as badly as her broken shin.

"Stop… _Stop."_ This time, she can't afford to let the faucet overflow her. So with ephemeral grace, she closes once-spread hands to fragile fists, and all that's left of the airstream are meek winds that have only the strength of a mere exhalation. When the pillar lands some feet away from her, the sound is quiet compared to the tempest that is her mind. Still, the fact that she knows that this dangerous power still resides in her breaks the little moment of triumph that slowed her racing heartbeats.

_No. Stop worrying, Terra. Just keep acting. Do anything._

Terra tries to conjure up the biggest Cure she can with anorexic, sooty hands, but the spell fizzles into pathetic specks of light, falling from limp fingers. She sees her veins, how they return to a normal blue; feels the pace of her blood slow to a creep as the magic loses its binds on it. _No. __**No.**_ She _can't_ be out of mana, not so soon. Without it, she can't _fly_ or _cast_ and she's got no chance to live… unless she…

_No. Don't think like that. I won't use that part of myself__** ever**__ again. Keep… moving… _

Using her elbows, she tries to start moving, but the weight of herself, the agony of her shin, is all too much to take at once. Defeated, she can't sit up any longer, and she falls back into a lying position. When her head impacts the ground, everything goes blurry, unsteady, and now it feels like she's split her skull open, or cracked her head on something. Pain burns her all around, and she's sure that if she were entirely human, she'd be dead from the loss of blood and the trauma.

Still somehow conscious and on the verge of becoming incoherent, Terra decides that if she can't move, she can at least try to look beyond her immediate surroundings despite her draining vision. What she sees when she turns her head to look at one side is like a torn up piece of poetry, stained with black splotches of ink and wrinkled at every edge.

The world she once knew, a lush, vivid canvas of healthy greens, is now painted over with dingy blacks and desolate grays, and it's rumpled and shriveled. _Like a fairytale turned reality…_

She remembers what happened before she'd succumbed to her coma. She'd fallen in the shallow, pearl-white water at the top of a magnificent spire, a tower straight out of the books Leo would read to her in her younger days.

"_Order's Sanctuary,"_ Vaan's voice reminds her, trapped in her head, in the memories she won't get to relive again. _"It's basically Cosmos's headquarters. It's where all the non-Chaos dudes hang out."_ It's nostalgic and saddening all the same when she hears him, and she remembers the softness of his young features. But oddly, _wrongly,_ the feeling's nothing compared to the one that this sweet dream-turned-nightmare she's residing in gives her.

Where there should be paper-white waves of water beneath her, there's only stone-cold, rough, damp marble. Where there should be a throne carved with godly finesse that looks straight out of another world, there's not one. Where she had once seen marvelous, tranquil streaks of gleaming green taking refuge in a calm sky, the streaks are now dull and spread in frenzied, un-calm patterns above her. Once tall columns of marble are now either broken into smithereens of debris or are now lying on the ground, half-broken or cracked or all of the above. Where there should be a goddess ready to answer the prayers of man, there is none.

In a frail whisper, lost and forlorn, she dares to ask the question aloud.

"What… what _happened_ here?"

Unheard and uncared for, the words are quickly replaced by the whistle of a stark wind. And now, with nothing left to do and on the verge of delirium, Terra Branford shuts her eyes.

* * *

_Life in the Cycles of War_

_Authored by Cid of the Lufaine_

_Cycle 012, Day 120_

_The time to exterminate Onrac is nigh, my son._

_Even as I remain concealed in this forsaken Chasm, I can see you in all your almighty, magnificent grace. Your talons have grown to rival those of that dismal Great Dragon's, Shinryu. Your mental fortitude is greater than even mine. Yes, the cycles have conditioned you exceptionally well. _

_Do you remember all the experiments, the feeling of so many needles plunging through scarred tissue? Your screeches as my wife — __**your**__ mother — was shot down by those wretched Onrians?_

_They used you as a weapon of war, trained you to fight as you bled under their fruitless cause. I too am putting to use similar methods to strengthen you, but with superior intent: so that we can make them pay for what they ultimately started in the first place._

_It is true that we could've left the cycles in arms at any time we desired to go back home. During the first cycle, the second one, or whenever else. Even now, you could still pry open a portal back home, and we could leave this farce of war, let these puppets live out their senseless lives on a stage devoid of meaning. But then you would be too weak to utterly decimate the Onrians, and then they would likely recapture you and subject you to even viler experiments…_

_Tear you limb for limb, gouge out your precious eyes, make yet another soulless copy of your mother only to break her and beat her as you are to do nothing but scream in uncontrollable rage…_

_But fear not, my son. We will return when the time is right. And when it is, you, Chaos, shall tear the nation of Onrac asunder with an iron fist. _

_They will bleed. They will __**burn.**__ And we will live the rest of our lives fulfilled._

* * *

_Cycle 003, Day 124_

_Though I must remain outside of the conflict, as outside interference from me is forbade by the Great Dragon, I wish I could once again express my gratitude to my son for leaving me a portal to the Rift in my Chasm. Without it, I would be left without the required materials to continue my study on manikins for however long we will be here._

_I have produced mere failures so far, none fully human, though some have appeared to express more emotion than others. Some seem to not know how to properly express themselves, while others only mimic what the pawns speak._

_The process of making one is quite strange. As I normally have no body with which to physically attain what I require, I possess a dead manikin's body and use it to toil in my labors. They deteriorate quite fast from them — I would reckon I have to use a new one every week or so._

_It is quite strange that I cannot possess something that even remotely lives. Perhaps it is because their memories preserve their consciousness and free will, and that is why I cannot strip them of control…_

_Ah, I have digressed a tad much, have I not? As I explained, I use these deceased creatures to conduct my experiments. I have always had access to a dark cave with a portal, a rather enigmatic location in the entirety of the Rift. But this cave's existence is truly a miracle, filled with limitless resources to do my work._

_I have already noted this in a previous cycle's documentation here, but I do find it fascinating that I do not use mere magical ore to make manikins, as those of the Lufaine think I do. I utilize sources far more intriguing. In my world, I combined these sources with an ingredient that was more limited than what I use now. Shinryu shares his mighty power with my son after consuming the memories of the pawns every cycle, and my son shares a fraction of that power with me in the form of a unique liquid substance. Every cycle so far, I get enough to last me a century. I then inject some of this liquid into those intriguing sources, and they would usually take the form of those pawns, the ones enduring constant conflict just beyond my secluded Chasm. As they all turned out eventual failures, I would kill one from every batch to possess for later and throw the rest of them back into the portal, down an inescapable ledge._

_When it comes to making manikins, I have learned to accept that making a successful one is a matter of luck. No matter where exactly I inject the substance, they all react with varying results despite all being failures. Some look nothing close to any of the pawns from the conflict, while others are a mix of two or more; others take the shape of fiends beyond this realm..._

_I started making manikins once more as I did in my old world at the start of the second cycle, using the body of one of Cosmos's dead puppets until I could transition to using these crystalline bodies. Though my endeavors may seem pointless, I cannot help but feel enthused whenever I find myself at work. I might even be able to make a manikin stronger than my son, or one that could benefit my world widely in some way…_

_I simply cannot help but feel that there will be a point to these endeavors in the future. Like all great scientists, I will continuously fail experiment after experiment until I find the solution._

* * *

_Cycle 012, Day 393_

_My son has made a woeful mistake._

_He has chosen a warrior that has only now revealed that he can open a portal to the Rift._

_Exdeath. You pitiful __**fool.**_

_Stuck in this Chasm as I am, my only way to know what happens beyond this place is through my son. I can share his immediate vision and can hear what he hears, all whenever I desire to, all thanks to Shinryu's great power. It is almost like being my son, except not being able to control what he does. As I hear one of my son's warriors report to him this grave development, I can only hope that they do not discover the manikins._

_It is fine for my son to have the ability to open portals to the Rift. Because he will not unless it is for his own benefit or mine — he could not care less about winning the wars when he has effortlessly triumphed every cycle. He has no desire to open another portal to the Rift at the moment. But Exdeath, oh __**Exdeath,**__ he will search for some advantage to win without end. And if he finds my subjects…_

_My experiments have taught me it all. They cannot be controlled, not in such destructive numbers._

_Such a development would possibly break the fragile pact we share with the Great Dragon._

* * *

_Cycle 012, Day 399_

_No. Everything is going __**wrong.**_

_My son's warriors thought they could control my flawed specimen. Thought they could cut down Cosmos's warriors without having to put in effort…_

_Blind __**fools.**_

_For the first few days, it worked. The manikins submitted to their methods of mind control, my son's warriors started to send packs of them throughout the land to hinder Cosmos's forces, and soon they readied a horde to assault her sanctuary. That's when it all went wrong._

_It all happened so fast, this manikin infestation. Soon, there they came, charging for my son, for __**anyone.**__ A vast horde splitting up in all possible directions, attacking anything in sight. Their own kind, any pawn, anything living in sight. A manikin beheading another manikin here, a manikin joining in with countless others, overwhelming one of my son's warriors._

_Right now, I hear my son's screams of rage. I had only recently begun to notice the subtle changes in his body over the course of this cycle. He has grown bigger, more unhinged, more twisted, and he does not remember me or his true mother… _

_He is feral. As I watch him cut down some manikins, I cannot stop trembling. The more he fights, the stronger he gets. And now he is too strong to guide or control._

_Why, oh __**why**__ had I made so many of those wretched abominations?_

* * *

_Cycle 012, Day 401_

_Everything lies in ruins._

_My son has left the world of Dissidia through a portal he made himself. The portal in my Chasm just like that, now gone. Shinryu has severed our pact, deeming my son powerful enough and observing that like this, new wars cannot wage on. He has nothing left to feed upon…_

_Though Cosmos and my son pick their desired warriors, it is Shinryu who summons them, Shinryu who controls the state of their lives at every moment in this world. Seeing no further use of them, he has left them all to rot without forewarning. And me as well._

_Shinryu's Protection has fallen. Outside interference to Dissidia can now come as it pleases from beyond this realm, now not only having to be born from those who inhabit Dissidia. _

_The puppets' souls will not naturally go where they must when they die, to be a part of the natural cycle of life and death once more. They will linger here, left unregarded for._

_Desire for revenge against all of these things — Onrac, the Great Dragon, even Chaos — resides in me..._

_Many creatures haunt my Chasm now. They screech, they hunt, they wail. Some speak words such as "l'Cie" and "abomination". Others threaten me._

_They are all getting closer. _

_No. No. __**No.**_

* * *

When Terra reawakens, there's still no sun in sight. Agony still ensnares her body all around and it's a miracle that she can breathe through her shaky lungs. She's dehydrated, and any minute now, she's sure she'll die. Her tongue is brittle, her midriff anorexic enough that ribs visibly make themselves known through plump flesh and her white leotard. Blood continues to pool around her, painting her clothes and cape with generous amounts of crimson. She simply smiles a heavy, small smile at the thought with swollen, red-cut lips.

_Good. I'm nothing but a menace._

She closes her eyes, awaits death's sweet call. Her strength to smile withers and she thinks she can hear the calls of the afterlife. She does her best to ignore that other voice in her head that wants her to keep pushing forward, to remember Leo's words over the sounds of the angels and seraphs that are coming to guide her soul to the afterlife.

Something abruptly cuts through the symphony of bells and flapping wings that dominated her mind. At least, she thinks it's a symphony of those things at all. It's really all a blurry, unintelligible haze that chews on the remnants of her dying mind. The thought of angels being the last thing she would imagine just sat better with her. Another rejection of the real world to protect her yet again.

But the voice sweeps through it all again with simple grace and ease, and it's not nearly as unintelligible. Dull and barely perceivable, like there's too much ear wax stuffing up her ears, but she can still make out the message. A female voice surrounds the words, soft and careful.

"It's _alright._ You're gonna be alright. You hear me? You'll be alright…"

Even through a gaze that's slowly drowning into inky, blurry darkness, she can make out long threads of hair that frame an unclear, dirty face. The hair that doesn't surround the woman's face flows off to her side, surfing the waves of wind that splash over her and this person.

_It's one of Vaan's friends… _

The question's already gripping her gut by the time she decides to ask it. "Why… Why are you helping me? Aren't you… on Cosmos's side?"

A brisk silence.

"I guess it's mainly because the alternative just felt _so_ wrong," she eventually replies, and Terra hears the uncorking of a bottle, catches the bitter waft from it as she watches the woman lower it to her chapped lips. "Just leaving you here to die. I just couldn't bring myself to do that."

Her hearing is still coated by endless weight and pressure, her physique is still wracked with inhumane pain, but somehow the warmth of the woman's soothing fingers, skating over knolls of flesh with easy grace, lightens all of the pain and pressure.

"But… I'm your enemy…" Terra croaks, feeling the cold tip of the bottle press against her lips.

"Yeah, according to some gods that brought us here without a care in the world. Besides that… I don't know. You just always seemed so different from the rest of those Chaos guys. Quiet, distant, lonely…"

At this, Terra watches her ruby eyes stare into her own. Effortlessly, they swim through the ocean of her soul, searching the still depths beneath the turbulent waves without any struggle. In trance, she doesn't blink for seconds Terra's lost count of.

"Oh right," she shakes her head, finally blinking, out of the trance. "Sorry about that. And I know this tastes awful, but you need it."

The tip of the bottle passes the border of her lips, and when the acidic liquid floods her tongue, Terra can't take it. She lets out a succession of coarse coughing, spitting out some of the earthy green liquid (mixed with the blood that resided in her mouth), but that's all she can do before she feels sharp fingertips pinch her nostrils closed and before a hand clamps her mouth shut.

"It's gonna be okay," Terra hears her say, and her voice gives her that soothing feeling again now that her hands are doing the opposite. "Swallow, okay?"

Dully, Terra nods. It's not really like she has a choice anyway. With her mouth and nostrils forcibly shut, the liquid has no way to go but down, and the laws of automatic movement of her internal muscles compel her to comply.

She swallows. Swallows hard. She feels the surface of her sweat-drenched throat ripple in tandem with the action and the astringent taste is fouler than the blood that's still nestled in her mouth. The last of it goes down, and finally, Terra's nostrils and mouth are released.

Suddenly it's easier for her to breathe in new air, and it's as if though her lungs aren't going to snap off so easily from doing so. The potion works its benediction, and she feels the warmth spread its wings within her, mending shredded sinew where it can, promoting the production of more blood cells to replace the lost ones. Collapsed sinuses refortify themselves. Split entera rebuilds new tissue out of nothingness. And while some blood still leaks through all kinds of openings, Terra's noticed that the flood of it has reduced itself to trivial trickles of blood.

"That was my last X-Potion," Terra hears her say as her face slowly becomes easier to make out, like a camera focusing on the subject so that it's as clear as it can be. Her vision isn't nearly as murky or dark as it was before anymore. "It should be enough to deal with a lot of internal damage, but _this,"_ — she points at the keen leg bone that sits atop a heap of rotting blood, layered in a thin crimson ooze — "is gonna take more than some X-Potion to fix."

Again, Terra can't keep the question to herself. "Why… would you go so far to help me? You… you don't know me…"

"Like I said," she starts, untroubled and calm, grabbing the area below Terra's injury, gaze still set firmly on hers. "I couldn't just leave you alone."

There's another question Terra can't hold back. "Who… are you?"

The reply comes swift and soft, and the woman shoots her a faint smile. "Tifa. Tifa Lockheart. And you're…?"

Terra blinks, looking off to the side, away from Tifa's pretty, dirt-stained face. "My name… My name is Terra."


	2. C I: Stumbling Along Vague Crossroads

**Hair:** I purposefully left Terra's hair color ambiguous in this piece since I thought it was best to leave it up to readers' imaginations. Green or blonde? You decide how you want to picture it.

**Bruh that chapter length though:** Refer to Prologue author's notes.

**POV:** Currently Tifa and Terra POV-centric, but I promise after this chapter that POVs will diversify.

**Flashbacks (Updated):** Attempted to fix the whole issue of swapping between flashbacks and present events (which caused confusion) by adding flashback headers. Way better than italics in this case, because these flashbacks are way too long for italics. If the events of canon Dissidia 012 are fresh in your mind, understanding the events and their order in this story will be much easier.

**Progress:** Interlude I and Chapter II rough drafts are finished at the moment. I spent this month banging my head on the computer monitor and after several proofreads of Chapter I I feel like my brain will combust. It doesn't help that I lean a bit more on the pantser side when writing. I certainly plan important details/events out and have a beginning, middle, and end in mind, but not to a super structural degree. I can't force myself to be an absolute plotter. It kills the joy I get out of writing and makes the characters feel more like props for storytelling than actual people to me as I write them. I'm way more a pantser than a plotter overall so if you catch any inconsistencies please tell me and maybe give suggestions as to how to address them. I will fix them to the best of my ability ASAP.

**Updates:** This story takes ages to update, as I put in the Prologue notes, and I'm sorry for that. I make an effort to stay ahead by at least two chapters and each one takes like three to four weeks to draft out.

* * *

"It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone."

― Herman Hesse, _Siddhartha_

* * *

_Chapter I - Stumbling Along Vague Crossroads_

_Before the Rift closing_

On a dark night, they sit near one of the many cliff sides in the Land of Discord.

If the desolate region could be described in one word, Tifa thinks "bleak" fits the bill well. The air that enshrouds them is dry, and every time an airstream slips amongst her, it leaves her bloodshot eyes even more parched than before. Even in the dark, the light around this place is still a dim red. The campfire she's sitting nearby only saturates the color further.

It'll be any day now. Soon all six of them will be charging for the Rift, the thing that caused this mess in the first place. The thing that startled the foundations of this strange war…

Sighing, Tifa gazes up at the stars, adjusting her sitting position so that she's got her knees up, putting her hands at her sides and feeling the rocky terrain indent her fingers. Stars lift up all of the burdens and weights on her heart when she looks at them. Free from the clutches of the ashen land, they sparkle in an unfiltered area of the atmosphere, radiating a pure white. A shade of white that reminds her of Order's Sanctuary.

Abruptly, now it's like she's not in Dissidia anymore, sitting on a tower, telling someone something. It sounds like a promise or a wish, but she can't be too sure, because some of the words are unclear, and it's like looking through a dense fog. Tifa fumbles with her memory, and when she tries to remember that someone's face and the hazy words they shared, she draws a blank.

It's a long, long time before Tifa blinks. When she does, she notices that Vaan's taken to waving his hand in front of her still eyes, all up in her space. "Tifaaaaaa," he says, and his sooty face looks either overly worried or strangely indifferent or some weird combination of both to her. Nonsensical, the thoughts do flips in her mind.

"Hm? What's up, Vaan?" She looks back at him. When she sends out the words, she does her best to pretend she wasn't just hypnotized by some distant dream or memory.

"Looked like you were in deep thought or something just now," he says, scooting back and leaning against a steep stone that's triple his height. "Like you were getting super-duper emo like Light or Kain usually do. Don't get emo, Tifa. Emos are weird."

_"Vaan,"_ Tifa chastises, looking over her shoulder to check that Lightning and Kain are still keeping watch several feet away from the camp before gesturing for him to hush up, hoping he gets the message.

Laguna, who's sitting on a slab of stone next to Yuna — who's busy casting Cure on one of his arms — speaks up. "Wouldn't quite call 'em emos, kiddo." He takes a swig out of a flask that's outlined by the amber light of the fire with his good arm. "More like quintessential ass — " — Yuna nudges him lightly in his midsection, though Tifa sees a small smile erupt on her begrimed face from his words — "I mean snarky stoics."

"Snarky emo stoics, then," Vaan corrects.

The beautiful glow of Yuna's spell spills out only far enough to soak parts of Laguna's battle-worn body. His jacket is tied around his hips, and the magic glazes over the murky yellow bruises that spiral around his arms. Once stainless, his sleeveless shirt now has a maze of blemishes smothering it. He shoots Vaan a quick grin.

"No offense, kid, but maybe you should go grab a dictionary."

"Nah," Vaan shoots back, and though he tries to look unfazed, Tifa catches a slight clench in his features before his face goes back to its trademark indifference. "Anyway, you gotta admit it, Laguna, you're totally afraid of Light. Remember that one time you and Jecht were playing that weird game of yours called 'mudball'?"

Laguna visibly winces, but his grin and all things positive aura persists. "Oh yeah… that."

Tifa can't hold back the question, the same way she can't stop the edges of her lips from curving down. "What happened?"

"Oh, you know, the usual consequences of 'oh-shit-I-pissed-Light-off,' " he replies. "Jecht's arm game is strong. Big guy almost got me in the nuts with his throw, so I decided to up my game. I went for his face, but he dodged and it somehow hit Light smack-dab in the face. Next thing you know she's hollering 'get your ass back here, Loire' and charging for me with a facemask that makes her look a billion times worse than Satan. Logically, because there's no way in hell I'd deal with _that,_ I ran."

"Well," Tifa begins, standing up with a slight groan to stretch out dense, combat-worn limbs. Her shoes scrape the rocky, unruly ground when she moves up, and the noise echoes around them for a bit. "At least she didn't catch up to you, right?"

"Er, well, she did," Laguna replies, taking another sip from his flask. "She gave me a quick scolding when she did. Least it wasn't as long-winded as a lecture from the Warrior. Also, don't try to outrun her. Lady runs faster than a Cactuar on steroids."

"You're right about that."

Caught off guard in the middle of taking another swig, Laguna slightly double-takes and chokes on his drink when Lightning's voice, along with the echo of clinking armor and steady footsteps, slithers around the edges of Tifa's perception.

"Ah, Sir Laguna, are you alright?" The radiation of Yuna's spell flickers out, her delicate hands already at work patting his back gently as he coughs.

Laguna forces a smile through the coughing fit. "I'm doing — " — another hack — "just fine, ma'am."

The sound of chafing gravel plucks away at Tifa's eardrums as she looks over her shoulder to see Kain and Lightning approaching them, their bodies drafting out from the oily blackness of the night as the campfire's light slips onto them, bit by bit.

Even though Tifa doesn't want to notice how bad they look, the light from the fire makes it impossible for her to ignore. Kain holds his helmet at his side with one arm, and the hand that grips it is crusty along with chipped, blemished nails. A nasty abrasion runs across the bridge of his nose. Meanwhile, Lightning's got grime of all sorts of dingy shades smudged against her sharp, stoic face. Tifa watches her cross her arms, hears the quiet sounds of her waving cape as a dry breeze passes by them.

"By Hyne, Light," Laguna spits, sitting back up as Yuna returns to healing him as if though he wasn't in a coughing fit a few seconds ago. "How the snick-snack did you sneak up on me like that? You scared the bejesus outta me."

"Preemptive strike," she answers, stone-faced. She raises an eyebrow when she spots the bottle he's holding in a lazy grasp. "You better be sober, Loire. You and Yuna are up for lookout."

"Relax, my ever-uptight comrade," Laguna says, waving the flask as Yuna withdraws her hands from him and stops casting. He stands up, glancing at his arm before giving Yuna a thumbs-up. At least now, the bruises don't seem to be there anymore. In the squalid, barely-lit night, anyway. "It's just good ol' H2O. Drinking liquor right now is basically an easy stop to dehydrate-yourself-and-die land. Would've been nice if I could've got the chance to ask Cosmos for some, though."

Tifa hears Kain make a rough 'hmph' noise. "Indeed. It would be quite a sight to see what a drunkard you'd make."

Laguna puts his free hand on his chin in mock thought. "I dunno, Mister Dragon. I think watching you do your typical jumping schtick while intoxicated would make an even funnier sight."

Lightning pinches the bridge of her nose, but Tifa can see the little smile hidden partially behind her hand that snags her frown. "Stupid-time can come another time, you two."

"Boo, fine," Laguna groans. Tifa doesn't understand how he manages to make everything he says sound so cheerful and lighthearted. "Alright, we're outta here."

He sends Kain and Lightning a wink before striding off with Yuna. Kain nods while Lightning rolls her eyes, smile gone.

It's not long until Kain and Lightning are making snide remarks at each other like they usually do, sitting down beside one another. _Typical,_ Tifa thinks, flashing a tiny grin their way as she finally plops back down (carefully, so she doesn't have to fathom going to sleep with an aching butt) on the ground.

A few minutes later, the wind stills itself. The crackling of the flames sounds quieter, more tranquil than before, to her. Silence, at the speed of a crawl, converges on them. They've been tired from everything for so long. The fights, the stress, the pressure. Even now, where they got a rare chance to unwind and not worry nearly as much about the future, they're physically drained.

She knows that they're all painfully aware of what's to come. It's easy to see in the uncharacteristic downcast look Vaan makes as he turns his face away from all of them. Easily heard in the dwindling comments Kain and Lightning share, which were initially lighter with freedom and levity, and even though she can't hear what exactly they say because she's drifting off to sleep, the tones they share are now heavier and burdened. She turns to look at Laguna and Yuna, and narrowly makes out his atypical frown and the unusual lack of the everlasting calm that would always control her face in the dim starlight.

As they began traveling deeper into Chaos territory, strange sights began to show up. They stumbled across Garland's carcass, run through with crystalline blades, armor fragmented and strewn across the earth. Lightning had promptly kicked him off the mountain-high ledge he lay at. Ever since, they knew what was truly going on, who the real enemies were from this point on.

The fact of the matter still remains: they have to close the Rift before the manikin hordes reach Cosmos. It's the only clear-cut path they've got to follow in this mess of a world. The only purpose in their lives that they can see because otherwise the manikins will overrun them all if they're not stopped in time. If that were to happen… well.

Tifa thinks that route would lead to anywhere else but back home. And even though the path they're taking isn't any less miserable by that much, at least with this one they've got a shot at surviving, making up for the lives of those they lost, and maybe even getting out of this hellhole of a world.

If there's anything she's gained from the whole cycle nonsense Kain taught them about, it's that they can't afford to fail. If they die by manikin, it's game over. No more resurrections or second chances. And if the purification thing's true, then the warriors Kain took out won't remember what happened this cycle, and be lost, and probably get overwhelmed by the amount of manikins that have already gotten through the Rift…

Tifa and the rest of them can try to survive. But even if they do, it'll only be a matter of time until Cosmos dies to the manikins headed for her… right?

She sighs, shakes her head. She's not sure what to believe in anymore. So she goes with the simple answer: she'll try to hold out for as long as she can. The longer she lives, the more she's got a chance at fixing what she can.

Tifa wishes things were different, and she's sure they all wish that too. She wishes that they didn't have to meet in some war waged by unrepentant gods; that they could've met in a safer, better place. In a world where they could just freely be themselves without having to worry about some evil menace sapping the life out of the world, or from her friends…

Shivering, Tifa internally begs the drowsiness that's gaining on her to pick up the pace. She's exhausted from it all, her bones are aching all around like there's no tomorrow, and she wants it to already be another morning where she's got a good night's sleep and feels renewed and alive.

She lies on the solid, stiff terrain, cushions her head with her stained, gloved hands. Her consciousness fades in and out at the pace of restful ocean waves.

_Goodnight, everyone and myself,_ she thinks before sleep overcomes her.

* * *

_Present_

When Tifa places the ration bar in Terra's bony hands, Terra just stares at it as if she's trying to decipher hieroglyphics.

"Go on, eat it," Tifa tells her before biting into her own bar, easily taking off two-thirds of it. After some nimble crunches, she swallows. "Don't want you to go starving on me."

By the time Terra's crunching her bar, tasting the faintest tinges of cinnamon on her hurting tongue, Tifa's already finished hers, dusting off her hands on her soiled miniskirt. Again, Tifa breaks the silence. "I hope I'm not bothering you too much."

Tifa glances at the marbled floor that they're sitting on, wrapping thin strands of her hair around a nail-chipped finger. As she does, Terra eyes the splint on her leg Tifa made for her. Tifa had to rip off her sky-blue cape and secure it with her own suspenders to make it. The soot and blood that's long since marked the fabric of the splint is garish.

Silently, Terra rubs the rank splint with her cold digits. When she looks back at Tifa, she's quick to catch that Tifa glanced back up at her at the same time. Stiff and tense, Terra rubs her arm, trying her best not to pry her sight away from Tifa.

It's not that she's uncomfortable around her _(okay,_ maybe she is). It's not that she doesn't like people in general (of course not). It's just that… well. Human interaction isn't really her forte, and it's been what feels like too many seconds for her to feel like she can put up a conversation that won't sound forced. That, and not being a fully human entity, doesn't help.

"_Terraaaaaaa,"_ Vaan's tone is sharp in her head, and she remembers him clutching her shoulders, trying his best to literally shake the words out of her usually immobile lips. _"If ya meet someone new, you gotta, y'know, talk with 'em. Socialize. Interact. Bond. Not only when it's necessary, okay? Try to, I dunno, pop 'em a joke or something. Oh, I've got a __**good**__ one for you to share…"_

_Well… Here goes nothing…_

Swallowing back the embarrassment that wants to fluster her features, Terra sets her bar on her lap. "Hey, Tifa?"

"Hm?"

"Uh… What does a sky pirate say when he gets… gets thrown overboard…?" Terra can barely mention the last bit of the question before she notices Tifa's face scrunch up in undeniable amusement, watching her cover her mouth while she laughs. For as well-mannered as Tifa seems, Terra doesn't expect her to sound like a snorting pig when she finds something funny.

And just like that, Terra doesn't remember the punchline. Part of herself wants to apologize to Vaan for forgetting while the other part is glad that she won't have to mention the questionable last bit of the joke to Tifa.

"Oh," — another snort — "I'm sorry, go on," Tifa insists.

"Ah, well," Terra shakes her head, feeling a strange heat from unfamiliar, unprompted emotions she doesn't know how to describe bloom through her gut and chest. "I forgot the rest of it."

Finally ceasing her riot of snorts, Tifa lets out a serene breath. "You really _are_ the girl that Vaan taught me about. Goodness, he told you so many of those god-forsaken jokes, didn't he?"

For what feels like the first time in her whole life, Terra feels a slim smile replace her perpetual frown for a millisecond. "Yeah, he did. And…" For a moment, she considers not throwing out the question that wants to free itself from the cage that is her lips. Quickly, she crumples and shoves the hesitation into the back of her mind. "He really taught you about me?"

Tifa brushes caring fingers around limp, straight strands of hair that fester among one of her temples, pushing the bundle behind an ear. Hanging on it, framed by her hair, a teardrop-shaped earring jostles; a radiant treasure in a sea of dirt.

Terra can't help but wonder how Tifa does it all; how she'd managed to heal her when she was on the verge of nothingness; of death. How she can keep her head held so high and proud in the face of intimidating odds. How she can see what good there is in a ruined canvas that's full of blemishes…

"Yup," Tifa eventually responds, resting her chin on her knees, folding her arms around lacerated shins. "A lot about you. Your eyes, your quiet nature. Pretty much a lot of what he knew except for your name, really."

Tifa goes unblinking, eyes unmoving and fixed on Terra's. For a moment, Terra sees something distant and distressful cloud her bright, cerise eyes. Something private, saddening, personal. Then, suddenly, it's as if Tifa never thought that personal thing, it only takes one blink for her calm, radiant energy to re-grace her expression.

Terra considers asking her about what she's just witnessed, but she eagerly declines the possibility. It wouldn't be right to do, asking her when she's probably felt those poignant feelings well enough.

In the hazy sky of Order's Sanctuary, larks take wing in an ever-darkening evening sky. At some unseen force's behest — _Fate, destiny, something_ — Tifa says another thing.

"You should get some rest." Uncoiling her limbs, she walks over to a fallen pillar, perching herself on it.

Terra automatically obliges, finishing the rest of her bar in a succession of crunches before lying on her side. The floor's cold and generally all things uncomfortable, so she puts her hands against her head to try to make lying down a bit more bearable. They're hard and not much better than the ground, but they'll work.

"Oh, and FYI," Tifa calls out right before Terra closes her eyes. "The punchline literally goes, 'he says _aaargh'._ Questionable pun, I know."

Despite herself, Terra snorts quietly at it.

* * *

_The Rift closing_

Ramming a brass knuckle against the entity that has Yuna's beautiful face, Tifa swallows down the hesitance that ascends her throat, chains down the eager remorse that wants to stop her agile limbs.

The manikin falls to the gritty ground. Around Tifa, innumerable, lunatic sounds, feelings, tastes, smells and sights rail and howl, overwhelming her senses. There's the clattering of rusted swords against magic that thins out the dusty atmosphere, infesting her lungs and nostrils with suffocating dirt. Nausea pollutes her throat as she spins around an impossibly large sword that belongs to either some Jecht clone or Cloud copy. There's the bellowing of many things that sound like enemies and friends alike with distorted, ruined voices. The odor of gunpowder and ash clogs her nose.

There's no more order or clear-cut strategy to this final charge — to this struggle to stop the manikin infestation in general. To kill these things before they kill any more of them — Cosmos warriors, Chaos warriors, whoever. Lightning's not nearby to shout her a brisk tactic; Kain's not at her rear to back her up; Laguna's not there to fire down any manikins that aren't within her melee range. None of Yuna's summons are close by, and Vaan's not here to give her an uplifting comment to keep her hopes steady.

She's all alone, surrounded by these things, stuck in the middle of a nonsensical battlefield, and the realization locks up her joints, nearly gets her killed by the Vaan manikin that swipes at her with a crystal cutlass that she stumbles away from in the nick of time.

The sky above her is cutthroat red. Before she can ready herself to kick the charging manikin, it gets tackled by one that looks like her. Bloodthirsty, the thing that she's not smashes fist after fist into its face, shatters its jagged cheeks and eyes. All while sobbing. Tifa thinks she can see the glasslike-liquid stream down from the thing's pupil-less eyes.

Tifa recoils from the assault, shakes out the dizziness that corrodes her brain as much as she can. She's seen them fight their own kind, and this is nothing different or unique from the previous times she did. But still, the sight of it stills her bones, freezes her up for god knows how long. Whipping the perspire-soaked curtain of hair out of her eyes' way, she reorients herself, counts — _one, two, three_ — and slams a whirlwind kick into another crystalline monstrosity that approaches her from behind.

_Keep moving forward, to the Rift, Tifa,_ she reminds herself, but the thought doubles over on itself as soot singes her eyes, abruptly illogical. _Which way is forward?_

There's no time for an answer. A powerful force — something she can't make out the source of in the polluted, hazy air of battle — snags her, flings her body with an impossibly strong airstream. She lands in a tumble, feels the brutal terrain scar and tear through her sweat-sleek skin. Vision teetering back and forth between too bright and too dark, she tries to gather herself up, urges jelly-like limbs to push her body back up, but between her thriving lightheadedness and creeping hesitation, she can't bring herself to. Defeated, she groans, barely makes out the slaughtered manikin bodies around her that got the worst of the force's impact.

Bile thuds in her rippling throat. It gushes out of her bone-dry mouth, warm and putrid and foul, drenches her cuticle-swarmed nails, leaves river-shaped trails on her chin as it flows out like a waterfall.

_No. Get up, Tifa,_ she thinks, heaving and gagging. Her long hair conceals her lowered gaze, lying against the brown, vomit-smudged ground in twisty, limp patterns. Bleeding nicks drool new blood from her palpitating legs. _Get up, dammit._

Narrowly, she's able to glance through the musty shawl of hair that hides her countenance. A blinding flare of light, stemming from some huge, luminous monstrosity that has wings. A searing sensation that toasts the air, sending out cacophonous sound waves that make her ears want to pop. Whatever this thing is, it's charging some sort of attack up to burn her and the other living beings around her to smithereens. Disoriented and delirious and unable to move as she is, she can't stop the thought from beating her optimism down. _Guess this is it…_

Tifa lets her eyelids fall, tries to think of concepts that put her at ease to soften the inevitable torture that will burn her to ashes. Inhale — _Marlene, flowers, Barret._ Exhale — _Aerith, Lifestream, Cloud._ The notions are easy to remember the names of, but she can't envision all of them properly.

Splenetic light and the erratic noises of destruction rupture her senses. She waits for the splitting of flesh and bone. Holds her breath. Lets out a messy exhale to take in another inhale. Waits more.

The impact she expects never comes — not where she expects it to. The blast sounds like it's happening too far away from her. She opens an eye. Through a wobbly, dust-imprisoned vision, she makes out the ebb and flow of a skirt, the elegant spin of a petite frame that swings a staff with undisturbed, peaceful grace.

In spite of her delirium, the name's clear to her like the back of her hand. _Yuna._

With the little strength she has, Tifa forces herself to glimpse her surroundings. The air seems a little less filthy and unclear in her proximity, coalesced with the denseness of the transparent barrier Yuna's built out of thin air. The spell encloses them, brimming a snowflake white and aquamarine blue. As if pulled from an otherworld where there are no limits to what one can do, Yuna stops her dance, slumps over her staff, all poise and fluidity gone. Above them, two winged entities slit through the sky, in pursuit of one another. Two Bahamuts, Tifa can barely make out; one real and the other fake.

When Yuna kneels to her side, her angel-wispy hands slide around skin that's scarred and bruised all over. White magic runs through Tifa's physique and the comforting sensation almost makes her forget she's in the middle of a warzone. Nausea in her depletes as some of her wounds reseal themselves. But then Yuna gives out a sigh and nearly collapses, the spell fading out.

"I'm sorry, Tifa," she murmurs, hardly managing to stand and help Tifa up. "I don't have much mana left. We… we have to hurry. Follow me."

Tifa nods, feeling newborn strength flush herself when she forces sore legs to carry her into a sprint. Not all of the damage is healed and she feels some cuts tear and widen around her thighs and ankles from the movement, but she's in good enough shape to keep fighting. In front of her, running with a slight limp, Yuna maintains the Protect and Shell that shields them from projectiles and blades that would otherwise bisect through their flesh with simple ease.

Yuna's strained strides worsen and she nearly trips, but she keeps one hand open and held high, the other one gripping the staff, breathing new life into the shield as parts of it grow spiderweb cracks from unseen forces. Tifa wishes she could see much beyond the spherical barrier, but battle-born dust clouds the exterior.

"We're almost there," Yuna says, vocalization calm but knotted with exhaustion. The barrier's starting to flicker, the cracks are getting denser, and before Tifa knows it the whole thing shatters under the force of some unseen impact. Gritty air surges around them with their protection gone, blinding in its own way.

"Watch out!"

Yuna's yell barrels into Tifa's ears just as she feels her shove her away. Tifa keeps her footing, looks up and immediately regrets seeing the sight — Yuna falling to the ground from the blunt blow of some manikin that's unrecognizable.

It swipes mad claws at Tifa and she sidesteps it. She grabs the wrist, gives it a shrewd twist, and instead of hearing the bone-popping noise she's used to, she just feels the arm break off into her grasp. Huffing and holding the limb like a bat, she swats the thing right in the throat, snapping off its head and breaking the rest of the arm in doing so.

She drops the damaged body part, skids down to her knees to check on Yuna, bites a lip when scorching torment blooms along her knees and shins.

Faraway echoes of war urge Tifa to keep moving, but she can't. She cradles Yuna's limp body against herself, puts a tender hand to her breast and — _Thank goodness_ — feels a thin pulse reverberate beneath her filthy fingers.

"You guys!"

The youthful shout cuts through the cantankerous clanging blades. Tifa rips her gaze from Yuna to see Vaan and Laguna, still coatless, rushing to them.

"Teef, we gotta get outta here," Vaan says, and Tifa watches him fail to keep his expression calm and neutral, feeling his grip on her shoulder tremble when he touches her. He looks at Yuna and more kinds of shock contort his features further.

Beside him, Laguna's trying his best to keep watch, glancing around his shoulder with his machine gun in hand, but Tifa can see him spare some of his glances to glimpse Yuna's pale form, and she knows what the uncharacteristic tired, waver in his eyes implies; what the little falter in his stance suggests.

"She's fine," Tifa tells them. "Just out of it."

Vaan sends out a "whew", but the tone in his voice betrays his lingering unease while Laguna's movements become less jittery. "Anyway, like I said, we have to go. Light, I don't know why she decided to volunteer to become some freaky martyr, but… but she told us to get away from the Rift."

Tifa feels her gut well up with heaviness and she involuntarily tenses up. And even though she gets the hunch that she knows why Light's doing what she's doing, a part of her still questions. "But why would she? We're supposed to be in this together, right?"

Vaan runs a stiff hand through the ruffles of his ashy hair. "Well, crap, I don't know anymore. She told us 'to survive', I didn't take her nonsense, and…" — Vaan lowers his head, fixing his stare away from Tifa's — "we got separated. And now there's too many of them to fight."

Tifa can't bite the questions back. Not when it concerns the lives of her friends. "What about Kain? Where is he?"

The distress that flashes in Vaan's normally dull eyes floods Tifa with regret. "Kain… he's… Light didn't exactly tell us where he went. I don't know. And Light herself… I… they're both probably dead by now, Teef."

Reeling in the knee jerk reaction of shock or anger or sadness or whatever the feeling is, Tifa doesn't let herself give in so easily to his words. They've already been through something similar like this, anyway — Lightning and Kain ordering them to leave when surrounded, and them coming out relatively fine. If Lightning could hold off Kuja and Kefka on her own and come out alive, and Kain could do the same with Exdeath, then Tifa's sure they can hold up against these things, no matter how much stronger they've gotten the further they went into Chaos territory. No matter how much those nagging thoughts she's trying her best to ignore say otherwise…

So, them being dead this time around? _Yeah, right._

"No," she replies, holding back the sinking feeling that wants to make her shiver. "They can't be."

"Tifa," Vaan starts, but he's cut off by the firing of Laguna's gun. In the distance, shadowed, glistening manikins — whole battalions of them — surge onward in their general direction.

"Don't mean to interrupt," Laguna says as he locks and loads his firearm to spray another batch of bullets at the incoming crystal tide. Gunpowder taints already-unclean air, and the smell of smoldered sulfur clogs Tifa's olfactory senses. "But we gotta get moving. Pronto!"

Even though Tifa knows that this isn't good for her and her friends' lives, she can't stop herself from staring at the approaching mass of creatures. Even as Laguna holsters his gun and takes Yuna from her delicate grip to pull her up into a fireman carry. Even as Vaan yanks her up to her feet and pulls her into her a sprint.

The manikins look haunted, shambling and aimless and lost. Some merely crawl, while others run. There's some sort of strange conception in their soulless-seeming eyes that Tifa can't quite make out, but even if she could put those notions to paper, she couldn't bring herself to do that.

That certain something that flourishes in their endless stares is just too private; too abstract for words to bear the burden of attempting to describe. It's too saddening. Too poignant.

Shaking the wonderment out of her system, she doesn't stop looking back. For Kain; for Light. And as much as she wants to follow the road that's screaming at her to go back and make things right, she can't. Because while she could make things right, she could also make things so much worse at the same time doing that. The hunch is instinctive, too real to ignore.

Between the unclear future and the marred past, it's all too much for her to make a choice. Forward, there's nothing but craggy mountain tops and airborne dust. Behind, just more dusty atmosphere and waves of manikins that will likely kill them all if they get near them.

She's stuck, just looking back at the rampaging horde.

By the time Tifa registers that they're crossing a narrow ledge that overlooks a deadly abyss, it's too late. The land beneath one of her feet breaks and kills her sense of balance, thrilled to sacrifice her to the maw of gravity. Vaan cries out her name when he loses his hold on her, and she can't feel the burst of terror snag her joints or make her blood run cold.

It's a depressing, eerily hollow sentiment that rushes inside her instead as she falls. Fragments of all the things she's felt and kept to herself flow through her like a riptide — falling off of some mountain from a different world or universe, her always waiting and mulling over innumerable things before acting, hiding so many different feelings at once from others...

Internal emotions punch her in the gut nonstop. Tears pour down her mottled cheeks. And as she gets ready for the final blow — the hard sensation of the consciousness being knocked out of her head when she hits the ground — she wishes she could rewind time and make things better than they turned out to be.

Silent and regretting, Tifa screams.

* * *

_Present_

Time is a mystifying concept, Tifa Lockheart decides.

She can't shake off that it's been only days since she got separated from all of them. From Kain, Laguna, and Lightning and everyone else.

It feels wrong. Like it's all gone by too fast.

_I never got to say goodbye._

It's also bewildering that only just a few hours ago, she'd finally met another living person. Someone she never really had interacted with before.

Idly, she looks at the pitch-black sky that enshrouds the bright moon of this broken world. As she does, her mind shifts to Terra.

She remembers it all too well, setting Terra's broken bone back into place so that she could apply an improvised splint there. Taking off one of her suspenders and putting it into Terra's mouth to distract her from the impending pain and doom, to keep her from biting her already bleeding tongue. Pushing and pushing against the impossible tension of her leg muscles, pumping out scream after scream, hearing pop after damned _pop…_

Sitting atop a collapsed pillar, she pulls her knees up to her chest, hugs them close to herself, and rests one of her cheeks on her discolored knees. She keeps her gaze up and fixes on Terra's sleeping form, nestled on the ground some feet away from her.

_I'm sorry for putting you through all of that,_ she thinks, sighing. _You've already been through a lot._

Tifa lets out an exhale. Too much happened in so little time. Leaving old friends behind to the jaws of danger, meeting a girl that was formerly lacking in free will and trying her best to help her despite her limited resources…

It was all too ephemeral, too fast. Everything. Using her last X-Potion — _"Don't __**waste**__ that, Tifa,"_ she imagines Lightning would scold if she were here and not at the mercy of manikins, probably broken and bleeding by now — _Oh, __**please**__ don't be, Light._ Remembering bits and fragments of her world a little too fast — _mako, Shinra, Aerith, and… who Cloud was_ — left her uneasy.

It's all like skimming a story too fast to savor the nice little interludes and characters.

Yawning, Tifa decides that maybe sleeping will help calm her frenzied mind down. Slow and steadying, dreams make feel lighter, more free. Sure, sometimes unwelcome nightmares barge into the middle of them. But more often than not, her dreams leave her feeling relieved and pacified. So much so that without their soothing grace, she's not sure she'd be as in good mental shape as she is right now without them.

_Besides,_ she thinks, hopping off the column and stretching taut limbs loose before lying down on her side, _I'm sore as hell. And tired._

Underlined by dark, nail-like dents, her eyes close, submitting to gravity's whims. And for a moment, things finally seem right, like all the disorganized jigsaw puzzle pieces are clicking together properly together at once. Everything feels in harmony. In sync and in tune, and time suddenly feels right and evenly-paced for her…

Only for a moment.

A deafening, distorted screech, followed by another, echoes around her, and in seconds she's on her feet. _Crap. __**Crap.**__ Manikins._ Frantic, her heartbeat is a lightweight, disorientated thing she can't control the pace of, and it pumps cold fear and hot adrenaline into throbbing limbs, tightens her chest as she rushes to Terra.

Terra's already stirring her way back to consciousness by the time Tifa's started grabbing her, shaking her. The screams and spry echoes of clinking, crystalline feet are getting louder, nearer. Out of control, Tifa's breaths become audible, and now she can't shake the feeling of mako eyes stalking her from inky shadows, glowing in the dark…

Out of nowhere, a riot of force, so hard it punts all the oxygen out of her system for a second, knocks Tifa to the ground, away from Terra. _Shit._ Grunting, she takes instinct's guiding hand and looks up at the helmetless monstrosity that has Kain's countenance. Huffing, she rolls away from the crushing thwack of its crystal spear.

_Steady breaths, Tifa. __**Steady breaths.**_ She gets up, commands wobbly legs to stand. The thought isn't enough to stop her legs from wavering beneath her or to make every inhalation more calm and slower, but the adrenaline that sails her bloodstream helps push the terror back enough for her to fight back.

The Kain-thing releases a demented laughter, nothing close Tifa remembers the real deal being like — _he never laughed around me, and he wouldn't laugh like this_ _—_ and when it thrusts its spear toward her chest, she sidesteps the blow, grabs and yanks the shaft of the weapon along with its body weight with both hands, and kicks it in the gut. Its body, heavy and tough, doesn't fall that far away from the impact, but it's far enough to buy her some much needed time.

Still, a slight hesitation pauses her for only a moment. Because it looks so much like him, she can't help but remember what could've happened to him, what probably happened to all of them. It's a feeling that will always linger in her mess of a heart, and even when she shakes her head to get a grip on reality again, the pain of it only flares.

_If only there was more time in the world,_ she thinks, turning back to Terra and away from the Kain-thing's slowly recovering form. _To fly. To dream. To remember and cope. If only._

She runs back to Terra — _Thank gosh, she's not hurt_ — and as much as Tifa wants to process the newfound shock that strangles Terra's features, she knows she can't afford to waste more time. They're outnumbered and Terra can't move on her own.

"Tifa? What's happening?" Lost and confused, Terra's voice is syrupy-sweet, and it almost slows Tifa's rapid heartbeat. Almost.

Adjusting Terra on her shoulders so she's got her in a fireman's carry, she hears her grunt from the abrupt movements of her shin, dangling off to her side.

Right on cue, several kaleidoscopic bodies, some twisted and shaped in the most gruesome forms, while others look nothing like any of the warriors she's seen this cycle, pounce from everywhere — shadows, from behind pillars, _anywhere._

"No time to explain," Tifa finally replies, vocalization taut and stiff as she braces her legs. "We have to_ get out of here."_

She twists on a sharp heel, rushes to the wide staircase that spirals around the entire tower that's at the nearest edge of the platform. As she runs down the steps, she can't stop herself from glancing over the towering height of Sanctuary every now and then. It's somewhat hard to make out since she's in constant motion, but it's like she can see the whole of Cornelia Plains from up here, and it looks dull and faint, almost sad.

The clanging of manikin bodies hitting the stairsteps pulls Tifa's focus back on the path in front of her. Some of them descend past the ledge, off the tower, while others land face-first on the thick steps, sloppily so. She darts past and through the brimming forms, but not too far ahead she sees a whole regime of marching manikins, blocking the only way she's got out of here. Feeling her stomach do somersaults, she starts looking at the tower for any doors she might be nearby.

_The doors that would lead to the rooms we all used to rest and hang out in,_ she recalls solemnly. She sees a rail-encased, flat platform not too far ahead. An interruption in the spiral staircase's pathway that's several meters wider than the stairs. And when she spots the ornate door handles that somehow manage to sparkle in the sullen, dim moonlight of Order's Sanctuary, leading to the inside of the tower, nothing stops her from picking up the pace even as the manikins start to overflow the platform.

When she first came here, she considered resting indoors rather than outdoors. But it felt off and wrong, resting inside, where manikins could unknowingly be lurking, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting in the dark, and getting back outside in of itself would be tough if she happened to be surrounded by them in there.

But this time, there's nothing to keep her from going inside. It's either that, fall to her death, or become manikin fodder.

_There's gotta be another way out of this._ She kicks open the door before the manikins reach her, slamming it shut to buy whatever time she can. She resumes her sprint anew in the ruined, tarnished halls of the tower's interior. _But right now this is the best choice I've got._

* * *

_After the Rift closing_

Tifa never hit the ground after she fell.

On a vacant shore, she cradles the head of a luminous creature that's much bigger than her. It has the wings of an avian, and the cawing noises it makes are sporadic and tired. In what little light the cloudy, oily sky has to offer, its uneven beak gleams with twenty-five different colors at once.

Nestling a bleeding temple on the manikin's head, she strokes its brow, looks at one of its shattered wings and the streaming, gemstone-like rivers of liquid that leaks from all over its form. Knife-sharp shards glisten in murkening light.

It saved her, risked its life, whisked her away from the land of Discord all the way back to someplace in Cornelia Plains. And now it's dying.

It's not fair, Tifa believes, that this thing has to die instead of her. That something that's so readily, selflessly decisive has to die in her place. And strange too, that it's not so different-looking from all the monsters that are trying to kill her and her friends and any other living beings in sight.

It's not cawing anymore. The rhythmic beats of its crystal-feathered chest are slowing. She hushes it, makes sure to make its final moments not so bad.

"Thank you," she whispers, looking at the faraway, misty distance, because sometimes looking at dying benevolent beings is too much for her.

Order's Sanctuary isn't far, and she reckons it'll only take her a few days to get there. It beats taking a long, deadly travel while ill-supplied back to the Land of Discord, where she's not sure if her friends are there anymore.

It's weird that the decision's easy to make this time around. It feels too wrong. But she supposes she's got at least enough common sense to make some logical distinctions when the road ahead is clear enough to see.

It's not like Tifa readily operates on keen logic. Hordes of manikins probably already got to Cosmos and are likely infesting the tower nonstop? Doesn't matter. She just needs to see if her and that solemn Warrior guy are okay. Surely they should be, because somehow she's still in-one-piece and not being purified or whatever, but it's not something she's certain about. Besides, whenever she's troubled and has nowhere clear to go, she finds that retracing her footsteps back to the literal beginning of things when she can is a good start.

Looking back at the giant bird-manikin, she notices that it's dead and motionless. Waxy, blank eyes are stiller and perplexingly prettier than glass.

They look a little like mako eyes.

When she shuts its eyes with tranquil-graced hands, it's a long time before she gets a move on.

* * *

_Present_

They've got nowhere else to run. Or to hide.

Watching Tifa push herself against the barricade of thrown-together-at-the-last-minute furniture that conceals the door of the shadow-soaked room they took refuge in, the cruel truth snakes its way through Terra, keeps her unmoving, seated in a perspire-drenched wreck of a living being.

The conglomerate of thoughts and emotions that unfurl in her head are too much to take. Here, something that seems like torture or fear, dreading the full might of her power. There, graceful acceptance for the possible death that's coming to claim both of them. Fettering about, a brisk thought that's somehow a whirlpool of negative emotions, ever at the ready to consume her and her humanity…

Squirming in her little pathetic corner, she drinks in the image of the gaunt fists she has drawn to her thumping breast, takes in the fidgety pulse that pumps her full of unending terror.

_You'll have to use your full power,_ a snide mimic of herself taunts. _You'll use it and destroy all you'll see, and you will love-love-__**love**__ it._

_No. You're wrong. I won't use it. I will __**never**__ love using it. Stop-stop-__**stop.**_

Terra strikes one of her temples with the most force she can muster, tries to pry away the devil that's feeding on her unbalanced mind. These thoughts will consume her, hollow out whatever bits of herself that's in this body and fill it in with the monster that's got inchoate fangs sunk into her soul, gradually growing deeper and stronger with every word it speaks.

It's then that she spots something in the corner of her peripheral vision, a barely-perceivable silhouette of something human-like, limp and outlined by what little moonlight's managed to seep in the ink-dark room. The sight is enough to rescue her from the internal fiend that's trying to gnaw on her mercy and sympathy.

Contorted as the form is, gnarled bones are spread out from it like the wings of some angel that's fallen from grace. It's obscured by a curtain, so Terra crawls toward it, ignores the sharp pangs from her leg, and whips the material out of the way.

Immediately, she wishes she didn't do that. With tenuous resolve, she recoils from the display of a bloodied form, a soundless gasp tearing from her quivering lips.

The woman's body is twisted, arms angled like the talons of a bird. Her white dress and night-kissed, radiant locks of hair are plastered onto the tiled floor, splattered by blotches of crimson and muck. It's her motionless, open eyes, though, that capture Terra's full focus. They seem nearly whited-out, almost scared…

If Tifa notices any of this, Terra hears no indication of that, and she can't bring herself to look over her shoulder to glance her. And as the initial shock dies down, Terra's forced to remember who exactly this woman is.

She's the one who gave her the reprieve she didn't deserve. The mercy she would otherwise not have without her.

_Oh, Cosmos… What happened…?_ As pity embeds itself into her otherwise unsure and confused psyche, she presses pulp-soft hands to her busted lip, endures the uncomfortable, bulky sensation that crowds her thudding throat.

Tifa's intonation slits through the unbearable silence, disbelieving and uncertain. "But… if she's dead, how am I… how are _we_ still here? Shouldn't… Shouldn't there be a new cycle?"

Staring absentmindedly back at Tifa, who's standing stock-still and clearly lost in a well of exhaustion and sadness, the term that Terra hears makes no sense. "Cycle?"

Before Tifa can reply, a riot of collisions jostles the door, and she grunts, digging her feet into the slippery floor as she tries to push back against them. Trails of sweat glide down her overshadowed face, little rivers of light that trace her supple, quivering features.

_No,_ Terra thinks, scooting back as the impacts diversify, getting louder, getting stronger. _**No.**_

_Use your power. Decimate them. Tear the screams from their lips. Watch them all burn._

Terra shuts her eyes, tries to close herself off from the cruel images of the world that dance to an uncaring staccato rhythm in front of her, but no matter how hard she claws her ears shut, the cacophony of the incoming assault and Tifa's worsening yelps only becomes more ear-splitting.

_No. I can't. I won't._

The shriek of falling furniture gets her to reopen her eyes. A knobbly, multicolored hand bursts through the door, clawing at Tifa's shoulder and leaving septic, scarlet tears there. The yell that flies through Tifa's lips intensifies as the hand pulls her against the barricade.

Pinpoint edges of the heap of furnishings carve new patterns into her uncovered skin, plunge their teeth into aged scars and bruises. The door groans from the piling pressure as tables and chairs fall like dominoes, overflowing and nearly crushing Tifa.

With the chaos of emotions that wracks her mind, Terra's not quite sure what gets her to submit to the whims of the fiend that internally haunts her. She wants to think it was because she wants to keep Tifa from dying. To finally do some long-lasting good. But then that mocking mimic of herself laughs, keeps urging her to just destroy everything she sees because that's all she's good at doing. And as resplendent, suddenly-there magic obfuscates her vision and intoxicates her bloodstream, the answer is now perfectly clear, even if she doesn't know how well she'll steer the drive behind it.

_I can't just do nothing._

Atoms of wrath multiply in her glowing self as her hair falls from its ponytail, cascading down her hunched back and growing. Terra doubles over, suffers the pain of thousands of syringes and knives stabbing into her all at once, lets out a severe scream. Dragon-sharp claws protrude from flesh-colored hands that darken into a lilac tone. There is the echo of ripping and shredding fabric as cold air strokes now-bare spots of skin. The agony from before is gone, and in its place, an immense desire pounds her instincts. It's both feral and tame, yet to be uncontrolled or controlled.

Thoughtlessly, she stands tall, and the mild pain that flares up her now-uncovered shin is _nothing_ compared to the power that swarms her open palms. Reality drowns her in an unfamiliar, distant wave, and all she remembers of it and herself are two things. _Protect and destroy._

There is a flesh-colored person in her line of sight, straining under the hold of several kaleidoscopic hands. _Protect,_ a placid command chides within her. So she does. She propels herself skyward, commands blistering flames to shape in one of her fists.

As the door gives away to the force of the incoming horde, sending the person reeling and flying along with chaotic furnishings, she catches her by the wrist with her non-lit hand, feels the human dangle like a ragdoll in her firm grip.

_Now, destroy,_ a thought orders her as the monstrous entities spill into the room. She smirks a ruthless smirk, and serrated fangs jut from her mouth.

Fire spurts from her free hand in a surge of raw power. In seconds it sets the dark space alight with an amber, fluctuating hue, burns and feasts on the things that reach for her in an ocean of flames. This ruination is not enough.

So she commands water to materialize and watches it burst up from the floor. Ivory, glowing magic clouds over her yellow scleras and violet irises. The resulting torrent snatches all kinds of charred things — roasting chairs and charcoal-black decorations and wailing humanoid creatures — and rushes them through the doorway.

_Destroy. Just __**destroy.**_

Flitting into the puddle-strewn hallway, still holding onto the human she's forgotten the importance of in a clawed hold, she hisses at the blast of unseen sorcery that sends her careening. She seethes, re-steadies herself in her perch in the atmosphere, and latches merciless eyes onto the translucent creatures whose forms refract starlight and moonlight at unpredictable angles with every movement they make. Newborn burns rupture her fibrous sinew, discolor tendrils of head fur and arm fur, but the pain doesn't deter her.

It's not long until her vision goes spoiled with red as she shrieks with unbridled might. All that's clear to her now are the spells that fly from her hand, the implausible magic that renders her ripe and pleasured the more she casts it. _Here,_ three cyclones of piercing winds. _There,_ a cascade of more water…

The creatures look prettier this way, shattered into shrapnel-sharp shards; dead in this cold and uncaring universe. _Yes._ She takes so many strikes, magical and physical, but she dishes back twice the damage. Flailing about from all kinds of impacts, she realizes that the magnitude of her flight is declining; that the spells that fly from her hands aren't as loud or destructive as before. This destruction is not enough. She needs _more._

Growling, she forces fresh sorcery through root-patterned, blackening veins that proliferate around lavender and pink skin. On an unending march, throngs of them invade every spot, from sweaty temples to thighs that are splattered with gore-red and magic-blue blood in messy lattices. Still a blinding, shining white, her eyes narrow into focused slits.

_Meltdown,_ she commands. And when the orb of flames brims to life, swelling up with every passing second, she waltzes around whatever projectiles her prey send her way. Then she sends down the gigantic conjuration with no hesitation.

As it bites down its devilish fangs into anything it can gnaw down — more crystal monsters and marbled floor and walls, even bits of herself as the force of the blast sends her hurtling through the atmosphere, out of the tower and into the oily sky — she grins; a crooked, toothed thing that pulls all the pieces of her face together into vicious angles.

Her eyesight is hazy and poor, but the sounds that chime away in her ears are robust and clean. Ardent wind pressures her hearing as she hears someone cry _"Terra"._ There is the clenching of thin fingers around her untroubled, thick ones. Oh, right. She was holding onto someone this whole time.

_Who?_ It's not important. _What do I do with them?_ _**Ravage them.**_

She barely regains control of her flight in time, just enough to avoid skidding into lush, rich grasslands with too-powerful momentum. It's then that she begins to feel the damage of numerous assaults on her body take its toll on her.

No matter how much she tries to fly higher, she can't. No matter how much she tries to see the world as lucidly as before, she can't. And before she knows it, she's a limp puppet that smacks against the unforgiving surface of water, losing hold of the last prey that's available for her to destroy.

Her back smashes against the trunk of a tree she narrowly makes out, and as endless ringing pollutes her mind as physical shock does her physique, she can't bring herself to escape the grasp of the water. It pulls her along with it, weighs her down.

As she sinks down into an abyss that could be bottomless, she simply thinks as mucky liquid slinks down her throat. It refluxes through her sinuses and back out to dirty water.

_What is there left for me to do again?_

The answer's so obvious, she doesn't know why she bothered asking herself it again. But still, it's good enough to motivate her, and she _doesn't feel_ stupid at all for _daring_ to ask the question.

_Do what you can to kill her._

* * *

_Present_

Tifa's managed to survive many near-death incidents and get back up on her own two feet in with ease. So it's weirdly perplexing that this is not the case this time around.

As she spits out some of the acidic saltwater that swishes in her tender, burning mouth, the thought caves in on itself, now nonsensical.

_None of it makes sense._

It's hard to make out exactly what 'it' is supposed to be. Maybe it's Dissidia, or the nature of everything that lives in it, including her. The feral monstrosity Terra became just as they were going to die, or maybe just Tifa's own existence in this world; her inexplicable, delicate survival in the face of colossal, insensitive odds.

It all seemed so easy before, to stay alive when these things happened. When she fell off of Mt. Nibel, she now remembers that she had her father to help put her back onto her feet, had the frame of a good childhood to support her in place of her brutalized skeletal system.

_But now_ — Tifa coughs out more astringent water and realizes it's soaked through her clothes, leaving pearly droplets to twinkle on her heaving guts and neck until more comes to wash over her again in a wave, stinging her eyes and stealing what little air she's managed to breathe — _it's just living hell to survive._

Because the waves keep smashing into her, Tifa struggles to focus on the stars that gaze down upon her. The dazzling bits of pure light that become fireworking starbursts in her view every time another tide smacks against her.

_Focus on them, Tifa,_ she reminds herself because there's nothing else left to give her a sense of purpose or company or comfort. She can't retreat to the past — _Terra, Kain, Yuna, Vaan_ — because it hurts to isolate herself there. Because it hurts to remember all of them so vividly when she's all alone and is probably going to die sometime soon. And at the same time, there's no way she can move forward like this, nearly paralyzed.

Again, she's stuck. Again, she's stumbling along, unsure of what's the best thing to do in the long run.

Tifa's not entirely sure why she's trying to push her busted hands against the same mucky sand that outlines her wet hair, willing her body weight to follow suit even though the waves are faster and stronger than her. But she figures following the feeling that looking at the stars grants her is at least better than dying alone.

She crinkles her nose at the thought. It feels so selfish when she puts it that way.

A bitter, stark wind runs itself through her. Like the sea, it's too cold, and breathing through it with wet nostrils is utter hell. It sharpens the ache that's already seized every tendon and ligament, and no matter how hard she chomps down her cherry-painted, dripping bottom lip to dull the suffering, it only aggravates it.

_Keep looking at them, Tifa. Keep moving, Tifa._

Tifa tries her damned hardest to fight the flood back. Convulsing elbows dig deep grooves in viscid sand. Trembling fingers hook themselves into particles of slippery dirt, only for some to unhook too soon under the wrath of another tide. The distinct starlight she sees deforms when sour water plunders her mouth and nose, gushing down her esophagus and sinuses. Some of it spills right back out when she gags and feels her glottis go tender from all the coughing.

She's really not sure how backing up only a few inches is enough for the water to stop slapping against her head. Or how she's managed to make progress at all like this.

Something of triumph and hope washes over her. Tifa would keep savoring the relieving sentiment if she didn't roughly flip over onto her stomach, no longer able to make out the stars. And just like that, she's got no chance to re-feel that relief. Because a crawling, beaten-beyond death being — _Oh, Terra_ — is what she immediately spots not too far ahead, and she knows — just goddamn, somehow _knows_ — that it's coming to end her.

Even if Tifa had the strength to stand tall on her two feet, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to fight or run. Like she's doing right now, she would only have the power to stare at the howling thing that she hopes still has a semblance of Terra in its being.

Tifa doesn't want to kill her, but she doesn't want to leave her. At the same time, she doesn't want to die.

_I don't know what to do._ She squeezes her eyes shut, feels another splash of freezing water crash against her numbing legs. Tears spurt from underneath particle-invaded eyelashes. Everywhere, there's saline. Itchy, harsh salt. From the sea, the sand, her tears. _I don't want to hurt her. I don't want to leave her._

It's the tough decisions that leave her motionless, not wanting to act. The ones that involve her having to make a choice that'll majorly affect the people she's come to know and love, for better or for worse.

It's so hard for her to get back up and move. She doesn't want to open her eyes, even as the monster's growls are getting more raucous; closer. Looking at the stars won't work anymore.

At least internally, it's easier to make a choice. It's not like isolation this time, when she chooses to think of them, now that Terra is near her. When she thinks of Vaan and his stupid rats, or about Yuna's calming giggles, or of Laguna's eternal positivity.

She hears the sharpening of claws that want nothing more than to carve her into a bleeding pulp of a human.

Tifa keeps her eyes closed. If she's gonna die here, then she'll do so in her dream-like memories. It's selfish and cruel, she believes, but if it means Terra will get to live on a little longer at least, then Tifa figures it's probably for the best.

Inhale. Exhale. Any second now, she'll die.

Inhale — _Yuna, Aerith, Lightning._ Exhale — _Kain, Cloud, Laguna._

Chilly talons press against her reverberating chest. She waits. Breathes. _Marlene. Flowers… _

"Get the _fuck_ away from her."

Tifa has no ample time to react to that all-too-familiar feminine voice and the crack of a firearm that follows. But she has enough to react to what comes after as she reopens reclusive eyes.

The creature roars and tumbles off of Tifa, trying to gather itself up from trembling knees when a sputter of _cracks_ overtakes still air, a barrage of electric shots slamming into a form so frail. Dust springs up from the assault, swathing its falling form. Holes of blood are carved into its quaking back, joining with the many others that are already there, along with dreadful burns and damaged skeletal structure. Drops of dark liquid run down sharp curves, sinking into and staining old, wet sand with dark blots.

Pressuring her elbows into soaked sand, Tifa ignores the resulting pain and gazes at the impossible. At the person she didn't expect to see again so soon.

_**Light…**__ you're alive after all… How… How did you get here?_

Tifa can't cherish the happiness when she focuses on Lightning's eagle-sharp look. It's pinpointed on the veil of dust that hides her target. The barrel of her gun mimics her gaze as she sprints forward, her damaged-beyond-belief cape following her abrupt movements.

Tifa doesn't really think through her next decisions. All she recalls is that she cares for both of them, Lightning and Terra. Suddenly, it's not so hard to make a choice, now that there's a clear way forward.

Now that there's a future she can see where neither of them will die, and things will be perfect enough. No self-sacrifices, or tears, or loss to risk if she were to make a daring choice…

Intuition forces her to crawl as much as she can to Terra's now-humane, nearly naked form.

She beats Lightning to the chase, wraps painful arms around Terra's human-toned, rib-outlined midsection. She tries to cradle her against herself even though she can't sit up. Warm wetness stains her skirt with vivid red.

She has no idea how Terra's still alive, after she sees all the gaping wells of crimson around her body, some perfectly circular with dense, oozing redness and others shaped unevenly with spread-out, faded and dried blood.

"Light, _please don't,"_ she pleads, hating how weak she sounds, meeting her imperial glare. "She's a good person. Please…"

Lightning doesn't lower her gun. Her filthy overcoat sways in tandem with her cape to a fresh breeze. Her dirt-sludged glare doesn't let up when she fixes it on Tifa.

"You give me one good reason not to kill this Chaos freak," she says, retained rage building up in her striking eyes. "She could've _killed_ you, Tifa — "

"I know. I _know._ But… she saved my life before." Tifa's sticky fingers settle around the frayed, burnt threads of what's left of Terra's garments. Baby-soft, pale flesh resides beneath her hands when she tightens them on Terra's bare stomach.

Thin pulses beat beneath her arms. Strands of Terra's un-ponytailed hair brush against her midriff. Tifa looks at her closed eyes, holds her like she's the most darling thing in all existence.

"Even if she did," Lightning starts, taking a step forward, "she's too unstable to be around. She's better off dead."

Tifa recoils, shudders from another passing wind. Droplets slide down her goosebump-laden limbs. "Maybe she's too unstable, sure, whatever. Didn't Vaan tell you about her? She doesn't want to fight — "

"He told me plenty,_"_ Lightning shoots back. "Fact of the matter is, you would be dead if I wasn't here in time."

"But that's… we're all okay. That's all that matters _now._ You don't have to do this. I… when she transformed, she saved me from a horde of manikins. I think she tried her best to control herself, but it didn't work out."

Tifa swallows back the sadness that dwells in her larynx. Lightning sighs, searches the muddy sand with tired eyes as Tifa's sure she's readying another retort. Before she can send it off though, Tifa speaks up again, finding the implausible strength from un-numbing, hurting legs to sit on her shins. Terra's frame lolls in her lap, a porcelain doll crafted in a universe that will never understand the depth of her value.

"I know you're worried. I know we've risked too much and lost too much from all of this. The fighting, the cycles…"

She stares at Lightning's softening-but-still-stoic expression.

"But you — _we_ — should give her another chance, at least. To be with us. When I first met her, she needed help. And she was nice, sweet and friendly, not dangerous or 'unstable', so, _please._ Just give her another chance. I think it would do Vaan some good to see her again, too, if possible. And… I did so much to save her life. I didn't want to leave her to die on her own."

Lightning blinks, gazes off to the side. Tifa sees emotions flash through her eyes, but she can't exactly make the specifics out. Tifa holds her breath, expects Lightning to snatch Terra out of her grip and end it all right there. But there's just more daunting silence, and between the fleeting seconds that flit by, Tifa realizes what it all means.

She's broken through to her for what could be the millionth time in Dissidia. And then she remembers, that above all else, that Light has a heart. Hidden behind some steel and ice that takes ages to crack through to see hints of, sure, but it's still there. Still well and alive.

Even though Tifa knows this, she doesn't know the precise reasoning behind Lightning's actions. She can make some potshot guesses — _Maybe she just didn't want to hurt me in that way, or thought about what Vaan would say_ — but she can never be certain.

Whatever it is, it's due to one of the many things she's got pent up inside herself, just like every person does. That much she's sure of.

"For fuck's sake, what the hell," Lightning says, but the tone isn't terrifying for Tifa to decode. _"Fine._ You win, Lockheart. I _really_ shouldn't be doing this…"

Lightning reluctantly holsters her gunblade, gaze still directed away. "But if she loses control of herself again, she won't be lucky next time."

Tifa fights back the haunt of Lightning's last words, finally free to relish in the solace that makes her want to thrive. Adrenaline pumps her exhausted legs and arms and gets her to spring to her feet, Terra rolling off gently onto the ground — though she wishes she didn't jump up because she can't take the sudden surge of pain.

She falls forward, but Lightning catches her with sturdy arms, all hints of coldness and rage sapped from her face and replaced with barely-perceptible surprise as she looks back at Tifa. Grinning, Tifa wraps her arms around her warm neck, nestles her chin on Lightning's shoulder. Pink tips of hair rest against her face, a little knotted, a little soft, cushioning her soiled chin.

She sends thanks to whatever gods or higher beings are up there, for giving her this one little miracle. _Thank you. Thank god._ She'd been separated from all of them for _so_ long. And in the warming seconds that fall by, it's as if they're just two normal girls in a normal world, and that they've never been separated for days that felt like forever.

"Thank you so much, Light," she tells her, hope thriving in her near breathless tone. "And I'm _so_ glad you're okay."

Tifa can _feel_ Lightning's barely-there smile. Piercing fingers pat away at Tifa's back, awkwardly so. "Same goes for you. I have no idea how people like you get by in places like _this."_

"Hey, don't underestimate us, Miss I-take-everything-too-seriously. We've got our ways."

Lightning laughs a short, sharp laugh. It's concise and blunt, just like she always is. "Right, right. Anyway, I gotta get you fixed up. You look like shit, Lockheart. And so does she."

Chuckling, Tifa loves that the reply comes naturally. "Yeah, well, so do _you._ Girls like us, getting out in the open 24/7 and fighting every day? We're doomed to look like this all the time."

Tifa knows that this all won't last forever. That the stars will succumb to morning, and that she and Light will have to get a move on eventually. And that she'll have to wake up to another grueling day and live out her messy life further.

So she makes sure to drink it all in. One of her friends being okay after all, having a new one to be with, having a shot at survival at all.

Smile not waning, Tifa Lockheart plants her feet firmly in the damp sand and doesn't let up on her embrace.

* * *

**Rift: **Remember what I said about gateways being meta'd? The Rift closing happens in the plain old Land of Discord and not the Empyreal Paradox for a reason related to that. ;)

**XII:** Off-topic but I started playing FF XII: TZA this past week and I've been loving it so far. Ivalice is a pretty immersing world to explore. I've seen the cutscenes for XII before but it's been a while so it's been nice re-experiencing the story while playing it myself. Balthier and Fran are my favorite characters in the group for sure.


	3. I I: Daring to Believe

**Hiatus:** Testing and school stuff aren't quite out of the way, but the hiatus can be considered over. I also just lost some inspiration, but I've been feeling in the mood to write now. All I'm going to say is, expect frequent hiatuses from me. I'm sorry. My brain just doesn't work in a linear way and it's easy for me to procrastinate and get distracted. I'm also just lazy and tend to be too ambitious with these projects in terms of length and scale. I was also stressing over releasing this interlude because of the writing decisions I made. I don't know. This is the natural result that came about from my pantser-infested mind. Hope I didn't get too preachy with the thematic stuff.

**Interlude:** Was initially iffy on putting an interlude right after chapter 1, but after fully writing out chapter 2, I came to the conclusion that it was integral to have one right here, or else many things would've fallen flat, I think. So I wrote this all out after chapter 2. I think it helped make the story flow more naturally. I consider this an interlude because it focuses on a specific relationship, and while important events are shown, it only focuses on a certain character's perspective and is extra thematic the whole way through. It's more heavy on the flashback side out of necessity. There will be another interlude entirely focused on another character in the future and possibly more than that.

**Bias:** Also, apologies for writing so much about said character, especially outside of this story. My bias for them is huge and they play a major role in this story, but I will try to let the others get more spotlight when they can. That's part of why this interlude specifically focuses on this single character, so we understand what makes 'em tick and understand part of their motives/who they are thoroughly in this narrative, thusly meaning they won't require as much POV focus in the future.

**Flashbacks:** Gave them headers to make them easier to comprehend both in this and the previous chapter.

**Warning:** Stuff happens here. Really sucky, depressing stuff. I made controversial writing decisions here. Decisions that have a high likelihood of bumming many out and crushing their hopes, expectations, and dreams for this story. That's the warning. Read if you dare.

**Graphics:** Last chaps were pretty tame by my standards. Starting here, things get pretty detailed. Proceed as you wish.

**Flashbacks:** Similar pattern to last chapter.

* * *

"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr. , _Slaughterhouse-Five_

* * *

_Interlude I - Daring to Believe_

_12th cycle, Many days ago_

The moon's rising, colossal, radiant, and teeming a healthy silver that night. It's so idiotic that Lightning wants to flip off the sight.

Six months so far of risking her life in this stupid as hell war in the slim hope that she'll get to go back home, and yet, the moon and sun still rise and fall in this deadly, psychotic hellhole, like everything's fine and normal. As if everyone here is living everyday lives, not nearly dying a number of times. It doesn't fit right; that nice-looking stars and clouds and pretty stuff get to exist in this shitty place at all.

Clicking her tongue, Lightning intertwines her arms, ignoring the chill of the outside air that's always doomed her bedroom to being a fridge. It's so idiotic and nonsensical, all of this: living in some stupidly exposed tower when she's not out there throwing herself in the face of destruction; serving some indifferent goddess that doesn't give two shits about war strategy; the fakeness of it all.

She's standing before her window. Milky whiteness of ageless marble seems to almost gleam in the moonlight, all around her. The silk-thin fabric of her camisole isn't doing much to battle back the wind, but she doesn't mind, really. The bitter weather's refreshing. Unlike Cosmos, Sanctuary, and Chaos, it's something that belongs in actual reality, and isn't just made up from someplace that's a twisted joke of a bedtime story.

Maybe that's why most of the aspects of Dissidia piss her off so much. It's based on what should be the make-believe. Myths, miracles, fairytales. Stupid shit that doesn't make a lick of sense. Except now it's worse because now there are actual lives on the line, some of which she feels responsible for maintaining, along with the fact it's not just some harmless story. And it's all because some gods couldn't do the work themselves.

Screw the abstract. Gods, legends, fables, even hope. They don't fit in with the real world, and Dissidia's the epitome of why that is. Those concepts don't work in existence. Not always, anyway. Or maybe not at all, actually.

Her eyebrows quirk at the mixed answers. She shifts her weight on an inclining leg, outstretching her other. She fumbles for the best answer, sharply knots her brow, hates that doubt is managing to cleave through her mind when it usually never does. She thinks she feels worse now.

Instinctively, she reaches for her namesake-shaped necklace, only to remember that she's lost it. Lost that precious treasure a month ago, somewhere out there. Fuck. She _really _does feel worse.

There's no way it's okay. Probably got screwed up by those Chaos assholes by now. But still, there's a bit of herself, she thinks, that wants to… dream. But then she shuts it up, curses out loud.

There's the echo of her door being opened, and she tenses, pivoting around, arms whipping to her sides. It's then that she remembers — _Ah, fuck _— that besides her camisole, the only other thing she's got on is her plain panties (because her skirt and shorts smell like crap, and she's got nothing else for bedtime). By the time the doorway's exposed and she sees a tall, familiar man, she's pulling down her shirt as much as she can. Tries to cover what she can.

Her hands remain at the rims of the bottom of her shirt. Forcing a keen composure to align her expression, she scowls at Kain. Her oceanic eyes cut through the starlit room efficiently. "Knock on the door next time, jackass."

Dressed in smooth slacks, barefoot just like she is, he makes an uninterested-sounding noise, walking forward with the poise of a professional soldier. Broad frame, broad biceps, broad steps. Effortlessly, he towers around a head higher than her.

"I would have if you didn't vulgarly tell me to leave the last time I knocked, which was around a month ago." His ashen hair flows around an expression that's somehow simultaneously distant and intense.

Unfazed, Lightning rolls with widening her range and intimidation, propping a knuckle on a hip and angling her chin higher. She does her best to ignore the upward peeling sensation at the bottom of her once-tugged camisole. "Why are you here?"

His mauve eyes scan her own intently. Almost as if in something of disappointment or disapproval. "I approach you whenever you're brooding in your lonesome a trillion times, and yet you still ask?"

Lightning huffs, forcefully yanking down one side of her shirt again. She resists the itch to growl. "Well shit, it's not like you could've picked a better time to do your stupid schtick. Or whatever."

"Au contraire, sarcastic woman," — Kain's getting all smirky, risking a glance that's lower, away from her face — "this was perchance the best time to do so."

She's been around him so long that she doesn't get offended as she expects to at his prying gaze. It's not like it's the first time she's been scantily dressed around him, anyway, now that she thinks about it. He's been so close to her, actually, all these months, that she's strangely… okay with it.

Not entirely. She's still a little embarrassed, wearing less than what she typically does around other people. But, then again, that's her with everyone. And she's okay enough with his behavior to the point that she's not considering decking him in the face for coming here and doing that, as she would do with any of the other guys if they dared.

It really doesn't make sense to her. Him always being around her, her always putting up with his sophisticated jargon. And now suddenly she can't tell when she started to feel so… alright around him.

Her eyes grant passage, let him tread that boundary further.

"Oh, shut up," she says, but the tone's not as biting as she wants it to be. A smile wants to twist her lips, but she rejects it before hints of it show up. "Smartass."

Kain's eyes are focused on her own again, despite her previous consent. "Perhaps you may consider getting a thesaurus. Your retorts are becoming repetitive."

Lightning turns away from him, draping her arms on the spiral-patterned windowsill, letting the haunting chill seep into her skin. She focuses on the inky night and its beautiful stars. "Hn. Your whole act is."

"Are you so certain of that?" When he asks the question, she feels the warmth of his torso rush along her cold back, and before she can blink, there's a flash of something metallic, shiny, pretty, dangling in front of her. And then the breath that barrels out of her lungs, she can barely keep it calm…

The oxidized, bronze-spotted pendant manages to take some pure moonlight captive. Its edges are impossibly intact, and when Kain perfectly hooks the necklace around her neck, the coldness soon lingers there, right around her chest. Right where it should be.

She wants to disbelieve it. But no, it's _really _right there, still fine and well…

"Kain, you…" — she scrambles for a reserved response, presses eager fingers to the rough-textured jewelry, slowly re-faces him — "you found it."

She wants it to sound like a question, but her articulation fails her.

There's something between a smirk and a smile on his face, and he's leaned in closer. "I was scouting the coasts of Cornelia Plains earlier today when I found it. I hadn't had the chance to return it until now."

Their stares persist on one another's. For a long time. In gazing, she sometimes finds it okay to say "thanks". But even though she's getting her freezing irises to be more like the skies or seas, she finds that it's not enough.

Kain nods, gradually turning back to the door. "That is all. Now sleep well, lest you wish to wake up with eye bags."

She's hearing his footsteps on the tiled floor. Shit. She's running out of time. Fuck a verbal thanks; he deserves something more."Thanks" is intangible, forgettable, and too much of a pussy move to say. Screw tomorrow. Forget consequences. All that matters is that she's gotta repay the damn favor right here and now, the way she believes is best.

_Besides,_ she thinks, _he's said several times that he wouldn't mind if we kissed, and it's clear he means it. And at this point, I'm dying to._

So she runs. Runs before he's even halfway to the door, her wild feet slapping against the frigid tiles. By the time he's turned around with clearly held-back shock, she's got her arms hooked around his neck, standing on her tippy toes. And when she puts her lips to his, she can sense the boiling restraint in the biceps that capture her arching waist in crisscrosses.

Saliva slides down their motioning chins, runs down her curves and his pectoral muscles. He nips her bottom lip, so she bites back on his upper one. She brushes fine hands along his steep cheekbones while his arms also change positions, strong fingers clawing along her scalp and shoulder-resting hair.

She likes his warmth. His fervor.

It's some time amid all of this, that Lightning realizes that, maybe, just maybe it doesn't kill to… hope or dream a little. To believe that miracles can happen. In all kinds of ways.

A part of herself always felt that way, in fact. And now she's realized that… or rather, remembered that.

And it's all thanks to him.

* * *

_Present_

It's still night when Lightning's gotten them to the cave she's been resting in. The region of Melmond Fens smothers her battle-bruised flesh with humidity, but she's not bothered by it. She likes it, actually.

What _does _bother her, however, is that she's gonna take care of that Esper girl even though she's a liability with nothing reliable to back them up. She's got powers that are dangerous, and if Vaan's descriptions of her are anything to go by, she's the absolute last person that belongs in a war like this. Besides that Onion kid.

Still, her powers can be useful, if risky. Especially the nifty flight ability. Lightning decides that she'll only consider putting them to use if they're really that necessary.

_Only one chance._

She's done a shitty job of healing Tifa and Terra so they're at least in decent condition. When it comes to her powers, healing's a pain in the ass to do properly, and doing it for long periods of time leaves her huffing and that crappy brand-leech-parasite thing on her chest seething.

Getting up from her shit work (Terra's leg is wrapped in a red-soaked gauze, and beneath it is a mess of half-stitched lesions and partially healed wounds that are bubbling), Lightning feels searing agony claw its way into her breast, so she clenches it.

Lightning looks away from Terra's still-unconscious form, glancing at Tifa, who's settled on a rock right beside them.

"You alright, Light?" Tifa's tone tilts with concern. "Something on your chest or what?"

"I'm fine," Lightning replies, turning away from her, fixing her sight on the cave exit. "Just need a break."

Tifa's response is lighter with relief, but Lightning's not sure if it's a facade or not. "Alright. Thanks for well… _everything. _Really."

"Don't mention it."

She walks out from the firelit cave into the natural luminescence that awaits her outside. Beneath her, mud and gunk inflate around her bloodstained boots in clumps of sludge.

There are ghosts, spirits in her head. They've been prowling there, ever since the Rift portal was closed. Ever since the tattoo on her breast went from a scorched, pretty snow-white to a corrupted, disgusting obsidian black...

_Come to us, inane servant. Return to Pulse._

If she can describe the vocalization properly, she'd say it sounds like something of a ghastly whisper, and it pricks at the corners of her psyche, electrifying and frigid. It's quiet, the voice, but since it's in her mess of a brain, it's as if it's always there, always whispering things, even if she can't always hear them.

She wants it to screw off.

_No. Get the hell out of my mind._

Exhaling a bitter, brief laugh, Lightning rubs an aching temple, her slender fingers dipping into fine skin. Either she's going mad or that thing's really telling her shit. Along with all the other spirits that've already crowded her mindfucked head.

This time, the inflections that come are fainter, and they're more human, more haunting. Kids, women, men, elders…

_Save me…_

_Get. Me. Out. Out… from… here, I demand…_

_Follow my voice… Help…_

_Come to the chasm..._

Grabbing her necklace, she feels for the stinging indentations of the pendant, inhales against the evil pangs that bite into her chest, against the scabs she feels pick and tear beneath her turtleneck.

Screw them all, these damned wraiths.

She almost wants to look back on everything. Wants to re-see the things she hasn't let herself recall for the past few days. But it'll be too much to take. To remember.

That's right. People aren't meant to look back. It's hard enough that there are fragments of her past she can't stop from invading her should-be peaceful mind already.

So she sure as hell won't let herself think much more on these things.

Lightning hasn't moved from where she's standing. Behind her, she can hear Tifa making shushing sounds and Terra's fast-paced exhalations.

Continuing to look into the barricade of twisty, towering swamp trees, Lightning listens. There's no sobbing coming from Terra, just some frantic breaths. And Tifa's whispering to her words of comfort.

Hell, Lightning can perfectly envision it. Tifa hugging Terra's pale frame, telling her calming things, whether they're pretty lies or sore truths. Terra taking it however she is.

_Probably having an existential crisis or some shit over that, _Lightning ponders.

"But… I almost killed you."

Terra's voice is pitch with tranquil yet daunting fear. She's not breathing loudly anymore, but the trepidation is easy for Lightning to decipher. Lightning remembers hearing that same horror all the time, back in the foggy, few memories she's managed to regain of her home. All those teenage soldiers, not knowing what they were getting themselves into; men dying every which way and their close ones mourning and coping with the same tone Terra's got.

In contrast, Tifa's is burdened by the immutable weight of the truth Terra's brought up, yet also graced by insistent optimism. "But you didn't. That's all that matters."

A sad note of contemplation. More rapid inhalations. "Because… she saved you from me. And what if I have to do that again? No… I don't want to do it _ever _again."

"You did the best you could. I don't know what would've happened to us otherwise. But you got us out of there. That's what _matters most."_

More "shhh" noises. Lightning almost lets her eyes perform a roll. She's never understood Tifa's tendencies to sugarcoat (or not even mention) ugly truths when it comes to her friends, or even outright avoid bringing up the truths when she can. Hiding from the truth usually ends up making things a fuck-ton harder than they need to be.

"I didn't, not intentionally," Terra says, voice delicate with light fear. "I _happened _to get us out, but all I cared about was killing things, I'm sure."

Silence. Lightning can tell Terra's won this battle.

Which means Tifa's likely gonna change up the subject, she's sure. To avoid the realness of it all while being considerate to insane degrees.

A Tifa-like sigh. "I… I'll leave you alone. You should get some sleep."

* * *

_Before the Rift closing_

Couple of months ago, Lightning would cherish teasing Kain with all kinds of secrets. Even with some of her too-personal ones. All those times they'd spent together, in beds or tents, fondling one another with splendid elegance as they whispered mysteries to one another. It was the hope of gaining an answer or two during those times that gave them the incentive to tease and discover. And over time, one by one, Lightning could feel her barricades lower.

Not long ago, though, specifically on the day she and the others set out on their journey to the Rift, Lightning would've wanted nothing more than to knock Kain the fuck out, if not outright murder him, for the shit he put their allies through.

He'd gotten so close to hearing her actual name, too. So close.

And now? She's stuck in limbo. In some sort of stupid in-between of those two opposing feelings for him. On a nonsensical spectrum where she won't experience either of the two extremes ever again.

Definitely not after all the crap he did. Not after he put into action those stupid methods of his.

They're at Bahamut Isles, inland. Mirage Sandsea's exit is several miles away. In the distance, a chorus of rustling grass blades and leaves sing. It lulls the sun into a gratifying slumber with crepitating florae, helping it set below the tree-covered horizon. In sync with the surrounding rhapsody, Lightning and Kain's even footsteps crunch upon dewy grass.

Behind them, the striking firelight of the camp becomes a particle of beaming amber that defies the incoming night. They stop in a stupendous clearing, flowers moving like little wavelets around their feet.

Kain's hair hides some of his profiled expression in Lightning's sight. All she can glimpse is a taut clench in his soiled jawline.

"Still insistent that I cannot keep watch with the others?" Kain's question is flatly stated, dulled with shrinking interest.

Lightning can't tell if he's putting up a front or not with that tonality. A newborn grimace flourishing on her changing features, she sighs. In the cooling evening light, the multicolored bruises around her biceps are lighter, a little less noticeable than usual.

She keeps her response as level as possible. "Like hell if I'd leave you near any of them alone. I'm not about to risk letting you kill one of them. Not on my watch."

Twisting around on a leather-clad heel, the unveiled gaze Kain strikes her with is fine and aloof. "Ah, this again," — a gust of wind hides some of the erupting emotions on his face by whipping coils of his hair around his lips and parts of his eyes — "you pushing sore subjects on a whim. Such persistent folly. Tell me, is this a symptom of an illness I've yet to be informed of?"

It takes ripe willpower for Lightning to not reply to the bait. That and sequestering her fury in her gritting teeth.

"Stay on topic," she growls, a jerk throughout her lilt. "I'm never letting you out of my sight. Not at times like this."

The stormy gales die down so she can fully drink in his intense gaze. "I must ask," Kain begins, eyeing his filthy nails and flicking off chipped polish. "What good does hinging upon obsolete grudges do for you?"

Lightning steps forward, stance growing in wrath. "It helps me keep backstabbing cunts like you in check."

He looks back at her, his scowl tightening. "Enough with your needlessly scathing remarks." Purple eyes brighten with the aid of emotion and withering sunlight. "I've no incentive to kill them like I did the rest."

"Maybe you don't," she fires back. "But knowing you, I won't take my chances with trusting you fully again. Shit, Kain. Even after everything we went through together, you just had to pull off that stupid plan."

He makes a straining guttural noise for a bit, stance broadening. Before he replies, she's already turning away from him and heading for the nearest and highest tree. She's sick of talking to him and wants to do something else.

She ascends the contorted bark with constricting, jittery limbs, swings herself atop a branch and inhales against the internal torture from the movement.

That's when she catches the odor of something burnt. Against the smell of the rain-afflicted trees and leaves, the stench is jarring and out of place.

She turns to the source, sees a blackened Kuja-shaped carcass dangling on an anorexic branch, face up. His body is in an acute crescent, bent heavily around his spine. Shriveled, uneven hair hangs around his bony, darkened face in silvery cascades. He's thin and naked. Bones protrude from mouths of ripped skin everywhere, sticking out like the pins of a voodoo doll.

Maybe the manikins got him too. Good. The last thing Lightning knows they need is some Chaos cocksuckers impeding their progress.

Cushioned on her own branch, below him, flower-patterned garments mimic the unnoticeable movements of the breeze's song. The fabric is nestled in a nest-like area, and bright, heeled boots are laid on it.

On all fours, Lightning makes her way across the expanding, fattening branch, scoffing. Of course that theatrical maniac would keep those kinds of things for himself.

It could come in handy to have for later. Maybe something to use as a splint when she's too exhausted to heal something broken when she's got to, or when Yuna's out of mana. Or just some extra clothing to use if their own start to fall apart.

They'll just have to make do with what they've got now.

Sitting on her knees, she fiddles with the clothing before folding it. That's when she hears Kain grunting behind her while landing on her branch, and she sucks in a dry, long breath. Right. That jumping move of his makes him hard to avoid when she wants to get away from him.

"What?" Lightning doesn't move to face him, setting the creased material on her knees and grabbing the shoes.

"Hmph. Another slain foe." He makes a sound of thinly-concealed interest, and Lightning imagines he's looking at Kuja with cold scorn. "But nevermind that for now. I thought you were insistent on keeping me on your 'watch', as you put it." She hears his calculated steps, feeling him shadow her as he comes around her. "You relish in your rage for a different reason."

She doesn't look at him, just eyes the material in her lap. "Whatever. Go away." Her twitchy fists strangle the fabric as if attempting to suck away the life from those disgustingly idealistic, botanical designs.

"I'll do no such thing," Kain declares, kneeling so she feels the pressure of his unyielding sight on her. "Not when you've verbally attacked me when it was not necessary."

"I do it all the damn time with you." Lightning's response is as fast as her name, and she fires back with a stringent glower, face coming up to meet his. "And this time, you're gonna piss off when I tell you to."

Kain's stare doesn't relent, but there's a nanosecond flicker of vehemence in it. "Oh, more intimidating threats," he remarks, a hitch of boredom stemming from his vocal cords. "How lovely. But no, I will not. But you will tell me why you're using me as the target for your cathartic tendencies as of late."

"Why wouldn't I?" She finds her feet, drops the clothing beside her, widens her steep and sure form as she looks down upon him. "You're a traitor. You killed them, _all _of them."

"Indeed, I have. We've been over this ad nauseam." He stands tall against the dark blue-tinged sky and silhouetted leaves, too close for her liking. "So you truly are doing this out of spite? Bitterness? Pathetic. And here I thought you'd learned to let go of such matters when duties of greater importance are upon us as we speak."

A knotted feeling in Lightning's chest snaps. How _dare _someone like him tell her this crap? A backstabbing, untrustworthy guy like him scolding her like this? No. Fucking unacceptable.

She balls a fist, clamps her teeth with undying vitriol. Strikes him against the face without holding back, her hardened knuckle colliding into his dirty temple.

Kain's footing remains stable. His head shifts slightly from the force and his gaze quickly realigns itself to hers. Calmly, one of his hands comes to cushion his temple as his look from before the hit remains.

"Clearly, you haven't learned." Kain still retains his upright stance. "Does this show of strength ever become tiresome for you to maintain? Do you ever think about what lies in our futures as we come closer to the Rift? Or are you always blind to the consequences of your foolhardy actions, Lightning?"

Lightning's fists tense, but the meaning behind Kain's words somehow keeps her and them in place. "It's not an act." She pauses, finally looks down at her feet because she's so sick of looking at his prying stare and because her thoughts are a wreck to sort through. "And of course I think about what's in store for all of us."

"Yet you still allow yourself to linger upon trivial, old plights." Kain leans in closer, breath tickling her grime-speckled facial features. "Even though our comrades' lives are coming closer to a potential end with each passing day."

Frosty thoughts scourge her head with flourishing ice. She looks back up, feels bits of her scowl deflate as she finally starts to understand what he really means. Unruly emotions have his angled eyebrows steep and his glare empowered by the feelings and words he keeps within himself.

"I know we're likely gonna die, you ass — "

"Of course you do. Yet you still exert your energy where it ought not to be wasted. Instead of using it for better purposes, you use it on me like this."

"Because…" Her train of thought is falling apart because talking to him is frustrating as hell. "Because you can't be trusted — "

"Enough with your vile stubbornness." If Kain didn't look enraged before, Lightning can tell he does now, between the rise in his voice and his intensifying gaze. "Why do you linger upon these old issues when the lives of our allies are at stake over a bigger one?"

Sick of his remarks and brewing with thousands of untold passions, Lightning launches another fist his way. He swats it away with decisive force, takes another step.

Kain doesn't stop there just because she's pissed. "Why do you waste what little energy and sanity you've managed to save this far on our journey on me? Why not productively use it for _them?"_

Growling, she closes the small gap between them to shove him away. Her pulsing arms hurt like hell, but it's worth it if it'll shut him up. She thrusts hard palms into his chest, but he staggers back only slightly.

"Because I've got plenty of that to spare," she finally answers, seething.

Kain marches toward her, faster than she expects. By the time she's considering backing up because it looks like he'll walk right into her, his hands rush into her abdomen, sending her reeling a couple of steps back. Her grunt is hoarse, her larynx aching.

"No, you do not."

Struggling for balance, Lightning scowls, hates that maybe, just ever so goddamn maybe, Highwind's onto something. Light shoves like the one he gave her, they shouldn't send her so far back and unbalance her that easily.

Still, she loathes that he's the one pointing it out to her. That a backstabbing person is the one of all the people that's doing this. So, against the practical and logical parts of her being, she pushes back against his words.

"Whatever." She pauses and considers her next sayings for a moment, because she's truly not sure if she'll really mean what she's about to put out, and she hates herself for that. "You're not worth my trust anyway, bastard."

"You've yet to think about what I've told you thus far."

Kain turns away and sits on the twisty edge of the branch, eyes focusing on the speck of firelight and sleeping bodies meters away.

"Think you can get off scot-free from our talk just like that, Highwind?"

"Oh, Lightning," he chides, shaking his head. "Think. Think for once, you holier-than-thou hussy."

His words get her to hesitate ultimately because she knows he'll keep this crap up if she doesn't take at least some of his words. So she does think for longer than a few seconds. And then she abruptly realizes and remembers.

Realizes that he's keeping an eye on the others from here, making sure they're fine. Remembers that, regardless of all the shit he's done to the others, that's in the past, they've been over it millions of times, and yes, he's right in what he's saying. That what's happened in the past, while not something to let go of anytime soon, is nothing compared to the growing power and aggression of the manikins. And what those monsters are doing to all of them, slowly whittling down their strength.

Uncharacteristically, she becomes chained to the thoughts. Doesn't act or lash out at anything like she normally does despite the striking feelings they give her. She just stares off into a vast somewhere, unblinking, and guilt unwinds its eager claws down her throat. It wants her to say sorry to a lot of things, people, random shit, maybe the whole universe in general, for too many reasons at once. Maybe Kain. Her friends. And… what was her name? Se… ah? Serah? She doesn't get why she's got the feeling she needs to apologize to certain faces, to some young-looking boy beyond Dissidia, or to even… herself, selfish as that sounds.

Off from her A-game, she then notices that Kain's in her face again, standing. A ghost of a smirk lingers on his parched lips. She finally blinks, looking off to the side and intercrossing her arms against her chest. She's worried that looking at him will expose too much of herself to him, make her look too un-Lightning like.

Lightning stops thinking on those things right then and there. It's too much to take, those hopeless, useless thoughts and apologies and losses…

_Stay in reality, Farron_.

Kain says nothing. He's just staring at her expectantly. And because she's remembered and realized so much because of him, she eventually answers his wordless, unspoken remarks.

"Sorry." She hates that word because it always lacks the weight of sureness it should have, so she looks back at him with unfreezing eyes. "You're — " she sighs, can't believe she's really telling him this — "right. I'll let it go, Kain. For now. No good dwelling on old crap like that."

Again, he finds no need for words. He nods, stoicism influencing his features, and again sits down where he last sat.

Dragging cuticle-thronged fingers to her necklace, she rubs the pendant in circular orbits. And as she faces the freshly indigo-toned sky, she breathes softly. She still hates that he did what he did even though there were less lethal alternatives that could've been considered. She's sure she'll kill him on the spot if he goes traitor again.

In spite of all that, their once romantic past is a stark reminder, something undeniable and unchangeable. It makes her think of things that could've been, though, so she seeks sanctuary in different thoughts. Except, the new ones aren't so different. They're still about Kain. Something about him.

Her fingers don't let up from the jewelry. The thoughts aren't easy to comprehend in her mind, but her heart reads them well. Too bad she's not good at deciphering her heart, either.

Still, it's a part of her.

Suddenly deciphered for a reason beyond her understanding, the translated thought unfolds in her clusterfuck of a tired, war-affected mind.

_Thanks for a lot of things, Kain._

* * *

_The Rift closing_

If Lightning truly knows what's going on in her fuck-up of a psyche, then she's really not sure what to make of her relationship with Kain at this point. And now that they're charging straight for the Rift, it's as if it's suddenly too late to.

_Still don't trust him, _she insists while she's coming back-to-back with him. Firing a slew of electric shots into the incomprehensible blur of psychedelic bodies surrounding them, she hears him impale one with Gungir. The resulting stench of the manikin corpses is something like dead rats and sulfur, and it occludes Lightning's nostrils.

Ignoring the crappy smell to the best of her ability (it's nothing compared to other things she's killed), Lightning conjures up a vivid Thundaga from atoms of fury. The force of the power flooding out of her system leaves her panting and almost doubling over as it pounds several manikins in the blink of an eye. Heavy dust arises from dreary soil and rocks as the spell disappears as fast as it came, so she can't see what the resulting carcasses look like. But the smell reassures her, tells her she's got them.

_Do I still hate him? Yes. No. Maybe. Shit. Focus on the __**fight**__, you dumbass._

Blazefire Saber, now in sword form, is a beacon of savagery. With it, she decapitates some Cloud grotesquerie, luminescent liquid splattering onto her overcoat.

Behind her, Kain barks her a question as she hears his spear shaft thwack away several mankins. "How do you propose we move onward?"

Lightning looks over her shoulder and past Kain. The Rift is a brilliant spectacle numerous footfalls away, but the clear details of the portal are hard to glimpse through the dust that singes her eyes and messes with her other senses. That and the mass of hollering, varyingly-sized and shaped manikins that wash over the land in a chaotic wave, heading in all sorts of directions.

Getting to it won't be easy, she reasons. In fact, she's not sure if they'll survive if they do.

And knowing Kain, despite his conniving and treacherous nature (because he has some stupid "I must do what I believe is best secretly" fetish) and her lingering hatred and bitterness she's still got against him, she… she doesn't want him to go there.

In the shadowed corridors of her mind, his voice from a recent memory wraps around a mocking chide. _'I may have committed many wrong deeds, but you aren't any better. Do not act like you are. Who is the one leading us to our potential deaths?'_

Facing the direction of the Rift and running past Kain, Lightning spits out the chunks of grit that cushioned themselves in her mouth during her onslaught. _Of course I'm not better, _she thinks as if responding. _In fact, I'm probably a fuck-ton worse than you._

_I'm the one who chose to do this charge and got them involved, _she recalls, biting her busted lip and savoring the ache. _I won't let them die. Never. Not over this._

Guilt claws at her skull, wrangles her with a bunch of regrets her heart and herself can't decode soon enough. _Fuck, Farron, _she thinks as she messily backs away from an incoming spell that now gnaws the ground in front of her with resulting flames. _**Focus.**_

"Have you lost your tongue? Answer me, Lightning." Kain's already beside her, his voice a delicate thing in a distorted ballad of manikin shrieks. The wall of fire in front of them sets several sparkling bodies ablaze, and the smell of carbon dioxide along with sulfur stings her nostrils. Everything is unclear, both dark with an oily sky and light with fire, and most of the manikins that bypass the hazy, blinding flames collapse like ragdolls at varying distances. The few stragglers meet either the end of her saber or his spear, falling apart into burnt shards and oozing more foul-smelling liquid.

Blinking and spitting out bloody bits of ash, Lightning faces Kain, mustering up the sternest glare she can. "I'm going on ahead. You stay behind and survive. And make sure _they _do, too."

Even though his eyes are obscured by his dented, damaged to hell-and-back helmet, she knows exactly what they look like. The hard grimace that spreads its disapproval over his lips is a dead giveaway. "Have you lost your mind?"

"No," Lightning retorts, cocking her gunblade and gritting her teeth. Sweat tracks down her temples as she gathers her wits, truly embraces the fear of the daunting future. It's easier to do now that she's spent so much time thinking over everything. The consequences. The unknown. The stupid concepts of miracles and dreams, giving her a bit of some hope. "Now _move."_

As she shoves him away and hears him fall down, she wills her brand to obey her commands. Watera escapes from her free palm in front of her like a geyser, dousing some of the fire in a linear path. Scalding steam rises like banners and muddy dirt underneath her clings to her boots as she runs through the path.

She's gotta hurry. _Run faster, slowass. _Arrows, spells, swords. She's barely weaving her way all around them, her breath a deafening anomaly to herself. Several sharp things scratch her biceps and legs, leaving dripping gashes.

It's hard as hell to gauge a sense of progress. No matter how much she runs, the portal doesn't seem to get nearer. Between taking a formidable fist to her body and somehow keeping a hold on her footing among other chaotic things, it gets harder and harder to keep moving forward.

Cura expands through her body from her hand, warmth wrapping around the newborn bruise on her abdomen. As it does, she strains against the sore limitations of her body. She runs her blade through the unrecognizable manikin that had struck her, smirking a quicksilver smirk before ducking under an incoming slash from another.

Before she can counter, the manikin goes spastic. Lightning hears a torrent of bullets pierce their way into its back as it wails and collapses into a heap of glass-like fragments.

Standing, Lightning hears someone else, and she denies the relief that wants to grasp her heart. "See that, Light? I can kick ass better than you!"

Inwardly, Lightning smiles, meeting Laguna's gaze, who's several feet away. Beside him, Vaan's looking out for other manikins, but the remaining surrounding creatures, while close, are doing battle with each other in riots of sparks and spells.

Everything around them, destruction and clashing blades, is deafening with the force of a hundred fireworks. Laguna hacks out heaps of ash, and for a moment it's as if he can't keep that stupid smile on his face anymore.

Vaan finally looks her way. "We're almost there."

Almost instinctively, Lightning's features seize up with some combination of guilt and anger. She hopes the cloudy dust hides the too-emotional parts of her face. "I'm going ahead. You guys need to retreat. You need to survive."

The thick particles of grit make it difficult for Lightning to pick out their expressions, but she's known them for so long that she can reason what they look like now. Laguna's, likely straining with a forced smile or the entirety of his mask broken and replaced with a seriousness not fitting him. Vaan's, likely the representation of rage.

"What? But we're supposed to do this together." Vaan's enraged tone. "We're not leaving you."

"You _will."_

Lightning can't force herself to look at them now, for both the wrong and right reasons. _The hell makes them wrong or right? _The question's dumb and pointless and hopeless, and she finds herself looking back at the Rift. That's when she truly realizes how, _oh _just how much everything's truly, _finally _gone to shit.

Up to this point, the manikins were somewhat manageable, only coming in chunks that wouldn't be a problem for two of them to handle. But the horde that's spilling its way through the portal and leaking out onto the battlefield is a literal flood that covers every bit of surface area in its path. Laguna and Vaan notice it seconds after she has, and uncertainty has them stuck in place.

Racing past them and willing the adrenaline in her system to empower her further, she shouts at them before standing like a statue of an honorable hero in the face of the impending, impossible odds. A single heavenly silhouette outlined by countless luminous demons of destruction.

"You two survive. Now. Go."

"No, we're not — !" — she hears Vaan grunt before he finishes, but whatever it is that makes him do that, whether it's Laguna pulling him along or some manikin they've got to fend off, she can tell it's non-lethal. Good. that's all that matters.

There's no more time to look back, anyway. No more time to think, apologize, regret. She's gotta live long enough to close that damn portal. So she continues to face the incoming wave with steel in her strong eyes and a sure stillness in her stance.

Holstering her sword, she gets the alien nature of her brand to once again bend to her indomitable will. Zantezuken's freezing hilts inhabit her bloodied and sweat-infested fists. Veins mark her skin in zig-zag designs, running along sharp contours of curve and muscle.

Feint. Ruin. Thrust.

Lightning wonders what doing this will really accomplish. Free them all? End this inane bullshittery for good and let them all go back home?

_Yeah, right._

A hit to her ribs. A low twist. A stumble forward.

It's not really that she believes herself to be some valiant hero that's doing the right thing. She's far from the most selfless person in the whole damn span of existence. The few memories she's regained of her world tell her that much.

_I ditched that kid without a care in the world. Left __**them**__all on their own because they were liabilities._

Sucking in ash and arid grit, Lightning doesn't know why the thoughts drive her hilt-filled hands to shake; why her tongue goes dry.

_What if I met everyone here in Dissidia the same way I met those people from my world?_

Kick. Counter. Blizzara.

_I wouldn't be doing this. I'd leave them all to die like the selfish fuckwad I am._

Glower. Dodge. Cough.

_I didn't give a rat's ass back then. Why do I care now?_

The supply bag on her shoulder jostles from her movements. The lunatic creatures screech under her might and wrath.

_I won't get to go back home, won't I?_

She's getting closer to the Rift.

_Fine. I don't deserve to._

Lightning knows death like her own palms. What it's like to lose all those familiar faces and friends. What it's like to come so close to it all the time.

_Not everything can be possible, anyway._

Grunt. Sprint. _**Focus,**__Farron._

Oh, she does focus. But not on what she wants to.

_Do I want to dream anymore? Believe? I don't know. I believed in Kain once. _

Falling on her back from a brutal blow to her gut. Losing her hold on Zantetsuken. Breathing in and out. In and out. _In and out. _Fira and Thundaga, sloppily casted before several manikins can finish her off with steel and bullets and sorcery.

_Trusted him._

Nail-deep wounds become blade-deep. A crack against her skull that would smash any person's head is survivable to her inhumane self. Against the impossible blood loss and soreness, she no longer sprints, but trudges on.

_Had more faith in him. _

She's using her bare hands to do all the work. The garbage in front of her has to die _now. _Fuck weaponry.

_Told him things I told no one else besides Serah._

Strangles a crystal menace with an electric, sparkly grip before casting it back off into the kaleidoscopic sea she's drowning in. Coughs out vital fluid and dirt. Lets herself exert her wrathful dominance on them as much as she can.

_Loved him._

Fury in her firelit hands. Ice in her firm eyes.

Screeching from brunt and cutting impacts in a way that sounds so unlike her. A battle stance once poised and upright, now slouched with her legs bent and back hunched as she stumbles toward the light of that insufferable portal.

_He reminded me to believe those stupid ideals, like I used to do sometimes in my world. And look what happened. So no. I'm only gonna believe in myself. Not him. Not fantasies._

She does. But then everything gets too impossible. Something nearly decapitates her before she loses her balance and gets trampled by a few hard bodies. Blood rushes down her chin from her lips as she briefly yelps, unable to reel in the pain. Some manikins clash with each other while others take aim for her, marching.

Lying on her side, feeling dust knife her eyes as she shakily tries to push herself back up, Lightning bitterly chuckles. And because even the greatness of her power is exceeding those damned limits by the time she's on her knees, she ends up crumpling back onto the ground in a pitiful, battle-fucked form.

_I screwed up._

Lightning doesn't understand why that thought hurts her so much. And why it makes her eyes almost want to water up.

_I always screw up. Why?_

No answer. And even though those jagged bodies are sluggishly approaching as her world starts to go bleak with grit and crystal feet and nonsense noises, she actually wants to cling to the thoughts this time. Not the real world.

"You _fool! _Have you got a death wish?"

Lightning can't put to paper the feelings she's feeling when she hears Kain's husky, strangely emotional voice. Passion. Relief. Rage. Some weird in-betweens.

Chilling armor makes contact with her pale form as his hazy, obscured-by-the-dark-and-dust face comes over her view. Already, with an expression she can perceive as emotional, gaunt with fear and tight with fury, he's pulling her up, her underarms hooked by his bent arms, her back flat against his chest as she's forced to stand with him. Feeling herself mold into the crevices and dips of his body, she knows that once upon a time she'd smile at this sensation. The touches of his body moments before he'd take flight, off with both of them into a beautiful sky…

But this time she isn't smiling. She's kicking her legs at his thighs, trying to do something, anything with her arms. All though he's not holding her legs and her feet are making contact with the ground, he's still holding her by the arms tightly, and without them, there's not much she can do except flail.

"Let go."

It doesn't work. Nothing works. He's bending his legs. Even as she kicks harder. Even as anger makes the dips of her face steeper and she hears him grunt in pain, they're taking off into the vast atmosphere.

They're ascending, and Lightning can't fight back the nostalgia that floods her at that. She stops kicking, feeling her legs go limp, just stares up at the dismal sky that she almost believes they can bypass, up into space. It's as if she's free from everything. Thoughts. Real life. Rue. Like a dream. Wind billows along their upright forms, stirs her hair into unruly coils and curls. It's quiet up here; feels safe. And when he reaches the arc of the ascent, the feeling of gravity bringing them back down is soothing.

When he lands, it is with effort; too much effort for someone as graceful as him. He collapses, but Lightning can tell between the few seconds they spend falling and lightly tumbling that he's trying his best to keep his weight off of her.

Around here, it is desolate, and the cacophony of war is a faraway annoyance now. She hears him uncork something as she picks herself up on her elbows. A bitter smell wafts through her nose. The jade bottle comes into her hazy view as she feels a gentle hand cushion her scalp, keeping her looking up at him.

They don't need to exchange words. He places the bottle to her lips. She nods, downs the potion whole without faltering. But she doesn't savor the feeling of her battered insides getting mended-up. Not at all.

She doesn't bother with "thanks". She can't afford to. They just stare, not blinking. His face struggling between all sorts of narrowly-restrained emotions, just like hers.

Her eyelids fly higher up. Her teeth grind, but her body trembles. His eyes narrow, but the hand behind her scalp stays there for longer than she expects.

There's one thing she knows Kain was always better at than her. Flying. Or maybe other things besides that.

Focusing. Accepting. Facing boundless tomorrows.

Bearing crushing repercussions. Having the world on the weight of his shoulders, making it look so easy because he's not bound by the ground like she is. Laws, rules, nature. None of those could hold him back.

"_No," _she croaks, grabbing him but she's too weak to maintain the weak hold. "Don't you even _dare _— "

Kain snatches himself away from her hold, and her hands fall uselessly back to the ground. Hesitance chains him to the ground for moments before he soars back up into the sky faster than she expects him to. With renowned strength and undying indignation, Lightning beckons her muscles to bring her up to a stand, rushing over to what she soon realizes is a cliffside, in the direction of where Kain took off.

She looks over the edge, seethes when she sees how far down the sea of manikins is. The Rift, some brilliant spectacle of multindous shades in the middle of all that chaos. And though she can't make out Kain's body from here, she can imagine what it all looks like. Him getting shredded to sinewy meat, wailing…

_Shit. _She can't get back down. Despite herself, she falls to her knees, lets herself get gnawed up by everything she's managed to defy at this point.

There's a flash, a blinding glimmer of the obscene. The Rift giving out in a cluster of chaotic sparks and the scream of a certain someone, churned with all the manolin screeches.

Lightning can't tell what it is she's feeling most. Are her veins becoming more visible because of that unbreakable rage or hatred or whatever the hell it is that's always been a part of her? Is she so damn upset she couldn't be closer to see what precisely happened to him? Is that regret or physical pain dominating her mind?

She can't tell. She really can't _tell. _All she knows right now is that she doesn't want to think more than she already is. Before she knows it, a pink, luminous light brims through her turtleneck as she uselessly calls his name. Pain slits through her chest, and a voice haunts her mind, new and unrecognizable. She grips her breast and in doing so grabs the necklace.

_Come back, little l'Cie._

_Shut up._

She unzips the fabric, reels in a breathless gasp from multiple things: Kain, herself, whatever… whatever the hell _happened _to her tattoo.

It's not whited-out like it should be. It's _black, _and there's a cluster of welts and blood at the center, shaped almost like an eye…

_You want to crush everything._

_**Shut up.**_

It doesn't listen. Her emotions are wild, savage, domineering. Too dominating. She's now flying and her eyes are glowing ivory. She glares at the wave of manikins, feels her nails become strong talons, feels the tattoo on her chest expand its plum-dark arrows to lace all around her body, winding around curves of muscle and limbs.

_Ravage it all, _she and that strange entity think in tandem. Because for once in her life, _yes, _her emotions suggest, she agrees with a supernatural higher being. She lets its influence expand, lets it mold her into the perfect puppet because she can't take _everything _anymore.

This _power. _The power that flies from her limbs, so blinding and ugly and deadly. Water. A colossal geyser that's sixty meters high, bursting out from a wide patch of land that doesn't go out. Fire. A meteorite-shaped spell she flings to the ground, assaulting all those piercing bodies and scorching the earth, leaving a humongous crater. Wind. A spindling cyclone that shifts in zig-zag paths, chomping up and breaking the manikins piece for piece. Ice. Scalpel-sharp darts flowing from her dancing fingers in impossible numbers, smashing into ground and plants and bodies. Lightning. _Oh yes, lightning. _Dark clouds amassing in a hideous haze as white, millisecond-there shapes singe most prey to a crisp.

Some things manage to hit her, even up this high in her throne in the sky. But it doesn't matter. She's got so many of them. So even as she recoils from a strong blow here and a blast of magic there, she only grins crookedly.

She lowers herself in the sky, casts spell after spell, takes hit after hit. It's not a horde of manikins anymore, reduced to chunks of stragglers that can barely carry on. Soon she's struggling to find more to decimate, and instead finds herself gazing upon a form that looks different. Crystal swords are punctured into its beating torso, and the eyes that capture hers are somehow both frightened and relieved.

There's no helmet, only long, wind-blessed hair. He's somehow stupidly _alive. _Impossibly alive. What was his name again? Who was he? No… that shouldn't matter. Right. No. _Yes. Or maybe not. _

She flies his way, bathes in some unstoppable thoughts of destruction before the thumping thing in her chest strains her movement.

_Wait, no. Do I want to wreck everything?_

_Fuck. No. __**No.**_

But there's a part of herself that's still not in control, a part of herself succumbing too much to aimless emotions that don't know where to start. Against her protests, power beats to life in her quivering palms. Terror scourges her face as she regrets. But on his, there's a strange serenity, even amid the sadness.

_Stop._

The magic in her hands dissipates, but that doesn't stop her from strangling him. She bestrides him, hooks iron-strong legs around his abdomen as the rosy light of her brand rips through the dust and darkness around them.

Even though she's sucking away bits and pieces of his life at an alarming rate, all he's doing is reaching up a jittery hand to stroke her cheek.

Lightning can't bring herself to say anything. Even so, they don't need words to understand each other. Not this time. His eyes are soft and understanding enough for her to know that he somehow forgives her for the mess she's caused.

But then they shake, his eyes. It hurts more than the fact that she's physically killing him, somehow.

She hopes that she's seeing things. That this is some sort of hallution bullshit, some cruel mind trick from her brand. Her view distorts every now and then, but the reality seems clearly apparent. Too real.

And it unnerves her.

_What have I done?_

The pulse beneath her grasp wanes. There is a newfound depression in his wavering gaze, in his fading smile.

_God… Why did I… Kain… I **have to**__ tell you, Kain, I… Fuck, where do I start… I — I — _

Her view, railing and crackling with all kinds of colors and blurs. Her mind, going feral.

Something lethal-sounding comes her way, from above. She has just enough energy to yank her bowed head out of the way, leaving Kain vulnerable. And then a crystalline spear punctures him from above, right through the breast and heart. He grunts and she glares upward. And when the manikin lands feet before them, it looks stupidly weak.

She's still straddling Kain, but she's not strangling him anymore. She's not in control of herself, and the reins on her mind have her in absolute control in this moment. It is a ravenous Ruinga she casts at the stumbling, stupidly should-be-insignificant mimic of Kain, and when the thing shrieks and gets blasted into bits of crystal, she feels empty. Her eyesight cripples and falls into a rhapsody of nonsensical noises and sounds again. Her mind feels like it's going to break. She's losing a consistent idea of the information her senses hurl her way.

She looks back down, and this time she's able to resist the impulses her brand wants her to submit to only because she's barely in control of the passions that are consuming her soul. For his sake or hers? She doesn't know.

She knows it's too late for her crappy Cures or Curas to fix this. But still, by Odin's grace, she _tries. _Throws jade spell after spell. She's so lost, so shaky, so unbearably irrational, that she doesn't bother with the spear yet. She doesn't care if she heals a tendon backward or fucks up a ligament as long as she gets the heart beating properly again. He doesn't deserve to die because of her selfish ass. Over her stupid rashness.

Finally, in a riot of green magic light from the healing spells and her unsteady movements, she reaches for the spear to pull it. But it dissolves like sand before she touches it, purple grains flying on indifferent wind. And his wounds, for some reason they're hard to focus on, to access, to make out…

Her sight goes into a frenzied panic again. The imagery around her seems both right and wrong. She can't tell what's real, what's not. Her hands go somewhere on their own will, lost. She can't feel, can't see.

_I screwed up. Please… please let me fix this._

Rejection, in his stare, as the hand on her face goes cold, quivering. All the secrets of his soul, bore at the last moments of his life.

A shuddering inhale.

"You… You know…"

A painful exhale.

"I… I really wonder… if I… if I could've taken the chance to deserve to know… to know your… your name."

A failed inhale. A final flash of life, going over dimming eyes, and all the things he never revealed to her, shown too much and too fast for her to process.

"Kain. _Kain!"_

When that final breath of his comes and goes and his eyes go still and dull while the soft touch of his hand leaves her, the new wave of emotions is too much for her to take. Cura finally stops pouring from her thin wriggling fingertips, ever useless.

She's still unsure if this is reality. Doubts the spells she had cast were Cures even though she knew they wouldn't work regardless. Everything in her head is schizophrenic.

"_**Kain!"**_

It sounds so unlike her. So very un-Lightning like, as another tear escapes her rapidly blinking eyes.

She loses her sense of time. Suddenly, spiraling out of precious control, she's being yanked away from Kain and back into the sky.

_I'm sorry. _Who or what precisely she sends the thought to, she's got no idea. But still, it repeats even as she wails and shifts like a marionette in the bleak sky. _I'm so goddamn sorry for everything._

* * *

_Present_

Lightning stands guard by herself. She's exhausted as hell, and sitting down with her legs crossed doesn't get the groveling pain from thousands of sources to let up from her sore arms and throbbing head.

She gathers dry mud in a gloved palm. Squeezes, tight. It helps her tangle with the occasional ghost voices that mock and question her and the migraine or headache she's got. Or whatever the hell it's called when you have to put up with annoying spirits in your head that cause your brain to feel like it's gonna burst or pop whenever.

Dull torment courses along the arrow-embroidered lattice of the brand beneath her turtleneck, and through the cells and neurons that patrol her brain. Against it, she just clenches her closed fist tighter. Dirt-darkened nails dig deep crescents into the worn leather of her glove.

"Rough night, huh?"

Lightning's so focused on suppressing pain — pain she can't tell is mental or physical — that she's only just become aware of Tifa's presence. Tifa's boots crunch crack-etched dirt before she sits on her knees. Now Tifa's sitting next to her.

Not facing Tifa, Lightning sluggishly shrugs, the bright neon of her pauldron leaving brief trails of yellow in the obsidian air. "For you, maybe. I'm fine."

"Sure you are," Tifa responds in an unconvinced, acute tone. "Doesn't kill you to get some shut-eye every now and then."

"Don't need any right now." Lightning spreads out the cruddy wings of her fist, watches the torrid grit she's held skitter beyond her expanding fingers. "Besides, you and that freak need it more than I do."

She's not looking at Tifa, but the chill of the rose-red eyes prodding her is too real to deny. "You don't have to call her that. She's got a name just like us, you know." At this, Tifa inclines her body so Lightning's unable to avoid seeing her, and her head's tilting slightly as she does, ease keeping her expression from being too offended. "I got her to tell me her last name too. I know how much you love addressing us like you're some drill sergeant, after all."

Lightning snorts through dreggy nostrils, feeling crusty mucus peel upward in random bunches. She's always felt super dirty in Dissidia. "Cute, Lockheart."

Despite the nail-like, leaden dints beneath her eyes, Tifa's slight giggle seems to come from the body of someone who's got a reservoir of vast energy at their disposal. "It's Branford. Call her that instead, okay?"

Grumbling, Lightning adjusts her sitting position so her knees are sticking up, plonking her chin on them and enveloping her arms around her legs. The restoring circulation reassures her sleep-stressed nerves, numbs a bit of the ache in her breast and head. "Sure."

Unyielding luminescence has the two of them smothered in a thin ivory glow. Pale, filthy flesh further contrasts the deepening shadows of the decrepit swamp trees and serpentine vines around them. They stare into the cluster of nature in front of them, remain in a united silence that's only interrupted every now and then by the croaks of some frogs or whistles of nearby birds.

"Light, I've been meaning to ask. How did you end up in Melmond?"

Something keen pricks at Lightning's nerves at the inquiry, so she decides against answering. She's kept the existence of her brand a secret from most of them, and she's not about to start telling them about it now. "None of your business."

"What? But I'm — "

"Leave it alone, Tifa."

Protest in Tifa's eyes persists, but she just stares away, nodding.

"Hey," Tifa starts again, and there's something in her voice that's too breakable, too weak for Lightning to stand. "How do you think the others are doing?"

Squinting her eyes at nothing in particular, Lightning pushes out a tense breath from a dry mouth. It doesn't want to leave, the same way she doesn't want to answer back. "Don't know. Could be dead, could be alive." When she forces the words out, she can't withhold the light strain of anger in her inflection; the feeling of crushing bricks on her gut as she scrapes her legs with fidgety nails.

Lightning thinks Tifa's trying her damn hardest to squelch back any signs of discomfort at the reply. And when Tifa finally says something, all the evidence she's tried so hard to hide prospers in her vulnerable intonation. "Well, I've got faith they're A-okay. I was with them, while you and Kain were… somewhere else. And then we got separated."

The mention of Kain's enough to twist Lightning's stomach with the brunt of a cutting sword, but she subdues it. Lightning decides it's not worth the effort to reply.

Tifa won't stop there. "Do you think he's alright? I mean, it's just… I know you guys spent a lot of time together, is all."

"Who _didn't _know _?" _The question comes out as though it's more of an accusation than anything else, and Tifa's eyes soften with sorrow. "Anyway, he sure as hell isn't. He's dead. For good. A manikin got him."

"Oh," is all Tifa fires back with at first, and it's a pitiful, meek little noise. It's a little frustrating for Lightning to listen to, actually. She can't stand it when someone exhibits so much heartbreak and anguish over these sorts of issues even though it won't make things better or help. Not for her, anyway. "You saw him — "

"Yes; I saw him die. Right in front of me. No hallucination bullshit or anything."

Tifa inhales loudly, and Lightning thinks the way her wine-red eyes murken with a deeper crimson makes her look like the embodiment of sadness. "I'm sorry for asking."

Lightning punts away some of the powdery dirt-mud stuff she's nestled on with the oxidized scuff of her boot, grimacing. Dust unravels in the stagnant air, a transparent curtain of grime that's free from the prison of the earth for now. "Don't be."

The response Tifa hits her back with sounds wounded, betrayed; even a little angry. "Why not? You two were close. And I know how it feels when you lose someone like that."

Against the tide of chilling fears and stewing doubts that swell in her abdomen, Lightning kind of shifts the subject. "Right, right. Look, he's dead, and the others might be, but I got something. Something that could bring them back. And I used it."

Tifa's gaze alights with bright relief and dark shock. "What was it?"

"Some weird plant called a Wish Hyacinth. And it should bring him back. And the others if they're dead. It should do that when a new cycle starts."

Right there, something not quite readable in Tifa's gaze surfaces. "Oh," is all she says.

"Yeah," Lightning replies, going against her gut feeling of suspicion and believing Tifa's just as skeptical as she is. "Sounds like a load of absolute bullshit."

Lightning can't will her expression to sharpen at the assertion. When Tifa responds, that undecipherable vibe about her face doesn't go away. "But you still chose to believe it can work."

Lightning refuses to think too hard about it, just pummels Tifa back with a quick response. "No. Why hope for it? There's no proof it'll do what it should."

"Aren't you already doing that? Hoping?" Tifa blinks, and her down-curving lips hide the intensity of the other feelings that scour her face.

Settling with kicking more dirt in the air, Lightning shoves away the emotions that want to taint her tongue with their asinine notions. "No."

"It sounds like you are._ " _Tifa looks frustrated, dark eyebrows sharpening and lowering in protest. "Why else would you bring it up in the first place?"

Anger uncoils from a suffocating wedge in Lightning's heart as she steps up and walks forward, leaving Tifa behind. Hands clenched at her sides, she just looks skyward, seething, wanting to be left alone. She spits out whatever's the easiest thing to say. She's sick of thinking about her past, and talking about it only makes her more likely to accidentally ruminate on it.

"Because frankly, Lockheart, I'm sick of talking about Highwind. Now let it go."

* * *

_After the Rift closing_

She's still flying.

Sorrow, for everyone involved. Rage, at nearly everything, including herself. It drives her to defy the monster she either is or is inside her head. And it's good. It keeps her from thinking too much. The emotions are a detriment if they're aimless and lost, wanting to ravage everything.

_Don't think. Focus, Farron. No… I __**can't.**_

Kain's dying moments, still a huge weight on her psyche. But then she wills herself to focus on the air, on her control. Reminds herself that if this thing gets to control her for good, it'll all be over. And… and she can't let everything end _here. _Not like that.

She stops voluntarily thinking, counts — one, two, three. Little by little, it starts to work.

By the time she's regaining her control bit by bit, she's noticing that she's flying over the sea, heading from the Land of Discord to Melmond Fens.

_Obey us, little l'Cie._

_No. This body is __**mine, **__dipshit._

That's the final thing that gets her back in control. The light of her tattoo fades as the sinful arrows around her retract back to the symbol on her breast, leaving bright flesh where it once was. Her flight dies, and as she falls into the ocean in a u-shape, gathering the shattered bits of her resolve and dignity, she shudders as the coldness of the water strangles her in its deathly embrace.

_I'm sorry… _

Lightning doesn't know if she wants to drown or carry on for a moment. Maybe in death, she'd be back with him, and everything would almost be normal again…

_We'd keep sharing those secrets. He'd keep bothering me with his sophisticated nonsense. Maybe it doesn't hurt to — _

The soldier part of herself reaffirms her intent, slaps her out of the emotional daze. _Suicide's just an easy way out. To hell with it._

It's then that she notices something glowing, defying the squalid dark of the restless sea.

_What is that? _

She swims toward it under the ocean surface with implausible left-over strength, grabs the brimming thing she now notices is a plant. She ignores the bounds of pressure around her, effortlessly keeping her breath held.

If Lightning hadn't been through so much crap recently, she'd question why she'd found a plant in the ocean out of all the possible places.

In the deep dark of the blue rippling ocean, her eardrums feel pressured by an overseeing type of quiet. A ghostly, genderless-voice comes to life within her brain as she holds the plant, and it's nothing like the one she heard before. This one is placid; understanding.

The bright white petals of the flowers drift in rhythmic motions. It's a disgustingly idealistic-looking plant, this one.

_Brought into this dismal ocean by the unruly elements of this world, we have been, from our cradle in the Rift. We are a Wish Hyacinth. We can make anything come true at one arbitrary cost, and can only be used once. Name your wish._

Skepticism wants to influence her mind, but so does something else strange. She has no idea what it is. But if there's a _chance _she can bring him back, the others if they're dead too…

She kicks her legs, powers her way to the sea surface. Takes in broad breaths and lets the air refill her lungs as soaked dregs of hair stick to her features.

She dares to believe as she speaks her wish.

Because no one's looking at her, she decides, strangely, against part of her will, to look more vulnerable. Even though her throat's heavy, she doesn't cry, but her head angles itself down. She looks down at her rippling reflection, watches herself as she uses both hands to bring the hyacinth to her chest.

_At an arbitrary cost, _she thinks as doubt seizes her up.

Instinctively, she grabs her necklace with a hand, feels the grooves to find solidity and reassurance. But it never comes. So she's left lost, scared, unsure, despite her wish.

Pearly and pristine, a tear falls from her face.

* * *

**Note:** Since I feel I didn't make it clear enough, the "arbitrary cost" is the fact that the Hyacinth won't take effect until the next cycle. Sorry for my questionable-quality writing.


End file.
